


Recovery

by Jaune_Chat



Series: Addiction and Recovery [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Angst, Dark, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, F/M, Forced Bonding, Friendship, Gen, Hurt Tony, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Mental Health Issues, Multi, Pack Bonding, Past Sexual Abuse, Past Torture, Rape Recovery, Self-Mutilation, Team Bonding, Therapy, Torture, Violence, mentions of mpreg
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-31
Updated: 2015-12-27
Packaged: 2017-12-13 13:22:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 40,976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/824766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jaune_Chat/pseuds/Jaune_Chat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Tony is forcibly turned into an omega, he has to discover who he is now, who he can trust, and how to learn to live with his pack.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Ok, so I said I wasn't doing a sequel, and then here I am doing a sequel. This is fairly dark, and probably triggery in places, and involves the rather odd dynamics of the A/B/O 'verse, so don't expect typical reactions to different kinds of trauma and betrayal. There is a heapload of violence and rough justice, along with permanent injury and change to several characters. While there is some comfort, and even some sex, this won't have a lot of happiness in it. You've been warned.
> 
> If you'd prefer a quicker, happier ending, I'd recommend [Healing](http://archiveofourown.org/works/824750) instead.

Tony considered himself insane for the next three days. Those three days were the days he willingly stayed in Steve’s power, begged for his attention, and gloried in every thrust-and-spill of Steve’s cock within him. For three whole days he begged for Steve’s come morning, noon, and night, and Steve was more than willing to oblige him. For three days he lived in a haze of orgasms, sweat, and the smell of Steve working itself into his pores, and he craved every single second of it.

The fourth day, when the heat broke, Tony woke up with a clear head for the first time in almost a week. He pushed himself upright in the bed, limbs a little shaky and sore from everything that had happened, feeling like he’d just been on one of the longest benders of his life. There was no headache, unfortunately, so he had no excuse for forgetting why there was a deeply-satisfied glow suffusing him, a pleasant ache that only came from his most satisfying sexual encounters.

Opening his eyes to see Steve sleeping next to him in the bed made the memories, the real reason he was here in Steve’s apartment, come back in sharp focus. His next conscious memory was of him in Steve’s shower, scrubbing himself with gritted teeth, holding onto the contents of his stomach through sheer force of will. Three rounds of washing, even with Steve’s pheromone-dampening body wash, still couldn’t quite rid Tony of the scent that curled around him in the steam – the warm, luscious scent of a recently-fucked omega.

_God damn it._

For several weak moments, Tony had been hoping everything had been some kind of thoroughly fucked-up nightmare. That maybe him and Steve had just stopped by his place for a little pack closeness, had done some roleplay, and Tony had fallen asleep and had a terrible dream. Tony opened his eyes and forced himself to look down, to touch his body, to see the slight roundness of his abdomen and to feel the slick, easy opening of his ass. He slowly dropped his head to the wall of the shower and let the few necessary moments of panic seize him in their icy claws, have their way with him, then retreat.

This had happened. He now had to deal with it. No one was going to save him but himself.

He shut off the water and toweled himself dry before looking in the mirror. He looked haunted, and a little bruised, but physically he wasn’t too badly off. Steve might have held him down, raped him, forcibly changed his gender, and went and bonded himself to him, but he hadn’t physically damaged Tony.

 _Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?_ Tony thought with a soft, bitter laugh.

There was a blister pack of medication on the sink, prominently displayed so he couldn’t miss it, and Tony picked it up to make his bleary eyes focus on it. Emergency contraceptives.

Tony spent a few moments crouched in front of the toilet when the nausea hit him just thinking about _why_ he would need them. And then he downed the pills so fast he nearly dropped them before he could get them into his mouth. That Steve had left them there, that he had given Tony this _courtesy-._ Or maybe it was just because after going through all the trouble of fucking Tony into submission he didn’t want Iron Man grounded by pregnancy.

Pregnancy. What the ever-loving fuck.

Clothes. He needed clothes. And he needed to go home. Steeling himself, Tony opened the door and went back into the bedroom. Steve was still out, lying on his side of the bed, curled around the space where Tony had been. He sported a faint frown even in his sleep, hands fitfully fisting the sheets as if wondering where his omega had gone.

_Right here, asshole._

Tony had never wanted to kill so badly. Red-hot rage flashed across his vision, consuming him as his eyes darted around the room. There was a heavy lamp on the side table, Steve’s shield on the floor, and somewhere in the apartment were the locator bracelets for Iron Man. Tony could see it, _feel_ it, how Steve’s skull would break under the lamp base, how blood would spray from his throat once cut by the shield’s edge, how Steve’s whole body would be destroyed if Tony unleashed Iron Man on him. He could do it; he could kill him right now. Nothing had felt so pure before. The rage easily overcame the strong urge to put himself back into Steve’s hands, to let him know he was close. 

_No, you don’t get me so easily._

Steve stirred sleepily, rolling over a little and relaxing into the bed, his hands still idly searching for his missing partner. Tony had a short, sharp vision of ripping away Steve’s most prized alpha attribute and shoving it down his throat.

Tony backed away before he did anything rash, holding onto his temper with both hands. He didn’t need to touch the arc reactor to remind himself about the virtue of patience. If he destroyed Steve, he’d feel a hell of a lot better, but then he’d have to explain to Fury, to S.H.I.E.L.D., to everyone what had happened, and Steve wouldn’t have to pay more than once for what he’d done. Death would be easy. Payback was not.

And if Steve died… Tony would have to find someone else to take care of his new problem, let someone else have claim. And the icy, hollow flutter in his gut when he thought about Steve lying dead warned him that could be bad. Maybe catastrophically bad. Tony pulled his clothes onto his body almost violently, hands starting to shake because of how thick Steve’s scent was in the room. It was mingled with his own heat odor, making a cocktail that Tony just wanted to sit there and drink in. He wanted to go right to the source of the aroma, press his lips against Steve’s skin, press his body against his and beg to be-.

Tony bit the inside of his cheek hard enough to draw blood and kept getting more clothes _on_ his body, instead of stripping like his hormones wanted. Steve was his… bonded. Well, no, more accurately now Tony was his pheromonically hardwired receptacle, as there had been no romance to go along with the ritual. As long as Tony lived, nothing would slake his urges faster or more completely than Steve Rogers. Steve’s voice would always elicit a strong response in him, his scent would be intoxicating, everything about him would pull at Tony from every angle. If you were a loving, committed couple, that might everything you had ever wanted.

Tony wanted to kill him. And he didn’t dare. The next asshole alpha to catch him in a vulnerable state might not care that he was Iron Man. Tony breathed out slowly as he carefully began to search the apartment for the locator bracelets, trying not to scent the air at all. If he let himself go, even a little, Tony could easily see himself being pulled back to bed again, searching for Steve’s touch. Most omegas weren’t like this, Tony _knew_ that, he’d hired plenty, but then against most born omegas learned how to work through their heats and hormonal upswings in puberty. Tony was a newly-minted omega, and didn’t have a scrap of experience in dealing with heat. His body was saturated with hormones, and his urges would be sharper, his heats stronger, his body making up for decades of being a beta.

Of being who he was.

But even bonded to Steve, someone even more unscrupulous could try to take advantage of Tony’s new body. If he was captured, all someone would have to do was deprive him of alpha come while he was in heat, and he’d eventually crumble. Omegas had been known to go insane under those circumstances, and Tony was ripe for that kind of torture right now. Hell, all Steve would have to do would be to keep his pants on the next time Tony went into heat, and Tony would do anything he asked to get relief. But he hadn’t, except for that very first time, when he’d extracted those promises out of Tony. Other than that first time, Steve had been unstinting and generous in his care.

This was literally a case of better the devil he knew than the devil he didn’t.

The fucker.

Tony had once read a science fiction story about an alternate earth, one where humans hadn’t evolved from wolves. There were no dynamics, no alphas, no omegas, no pack, no scenting. Only women could bear children, and men could only father them. There were no hyper-fertile, fecund omegas, no potent alphas, no heat or knotting or seasons of rut. Everyone was essentially a beta, and sex was a voluntary act, rather than a pheromonally-driven need. 

He remembered it had garnered a lot of controversy from the scientific community. Psychologists had wondered how sexism would have worked in a world like that, if one gender or another would be particularly oppressed, while those in the medical and anthropological community wondered how these alternative humans would even survive without heat and rut. They whole race would go extinct, some had said, without a biological alarm going off at regular intervals. Right now Tony would happily take that world, and any rampant sexism or threats of extinction, over his own. At least there, changing would take an extraordinary amount of effort.

It was a nice thought, a calming one, but Tony didn’t linger there long. He lived in _this_ world, the real world, and so did any solutions. And all solutions began and ended with your pack. Tony had been nearly alone for all of his adult life, after his parents had died, only aligning with Stane until he’d betrayed him, and occasionally moving into Rhodey, Pepper, and Happy’s orbit. It wasn’t unusual for a very driven person to pare down his or her pack so one could concentrate on a career, but even a pared-down pack was usually at least three people. Not two. Not one. When Stane died, Tony had tentatively strengthened his bonds with his few remaining friends, but people had still considered him very strange for being so alone, regardless of how many willing fans wanted to bed him.

To find himself packed up with five of the most volatile and dangerous people in existence was as much a shock to them as him. The shock was it had been working. Not perfectly, not all the time, but he’d started to trust them, to lean on them. He’d become comfortable around them, enough to drop a mask or two, to let the push-and-pull of their dynamics help guide him through the landmines of living with superheroes. Thor was a powerful alpha, bonded already to his genius scientist girlfriend. Clint was a fellow beta, and Natasha was, through birth or whatever the hell her former employers had done to her, intersexed, able to be any dynamic with good acting and a spray of pheromone perfume. He envied the fuck out of her right now. Bruce was a brutally oppressed omega who’d lived celibate and in control for so long that he’d been nearly a beta.

And Tony had gleefully run through all their dynamics, figuring out his new friends like he figured out a mathematical problem. It was new for him, this business of packing up, and all the more interesting because of it. Had he been the best pack member ever? No. He’d gone at it alone for so long, no family pack, and only a tiny work and friend pack, that he didn’t play well with others. He’d loved his independence more than figuring out his place in the hierarchy. But this… Tony ran a hand over his abdomen and pulled away, tightening his belt against the nigh-invisible rounding. He couldn’t forgive this.

He needed to talk to Bruce, and fast. Most omegas learned to managed their heats when they hit puberty, at least enough that they could get into seclusion and give their partner a call before heat pulled the under. But Tony had been made omega, and that meant stronger, sharper urges, more intense heats, and deep craving for contact with the one who’d made him so, and all of that when he’d never had to deal with it before. Tony might have been able to cultivate patience, but impulse control had never been his strong suit, particularly when it came to sex. He wasn’t used to denying himself in that arena.

Steve had used that as a weapon, as leverage to get Tony pliant and unsuspecting before attacking.

 _Smart little soldier,_ Tony thought, teeth gritting.

Tony finally found the bracelets shoved in the fridge (the last place Tony had thought to look, so, clever Steve), and clamped the metal around his wrists. It let him know he could still destroy Steve when he wanted to.

That comforting thought let him leave Steve’s apartment without calling the suit indoors and blasting him into dust. 

But he knew he couldn’t leave for long. Never again.

\--

Tony left from the roof, calling Iron Man and flying back to the Tower. He didn’t walk, take the subway, or call a cab just out of general principle, wouldn’t call SHIELD, and not even Happy’s legendary discretion could keep him from noticing his boss’ scent had changed so drastically.

“Sir.”

JARVIS’ voice was unexpectedly… contrite? Apologetic? There was some hint of emotion in JARVIS’ tone, the vocal inflection sub-routines picking some shading of speech to convey some subtle information.

Like maybe JARVIS had full medical diagnostics in the suit and really couldn’t help but notice his creator was suddenly an omega.

Shit.

“Yeah, J,” Tony said, suddenly feeling about a thousand years old.

“May I assume your continued desire for discretion when it comes to personal problems, or would you prefer public humiliation for your enemies?”

Tony’s throat closed for a second and he went into hover mode as his vision blurred. He blinked back a veil of tears with an effort and took a dozen deep breaths, and thanked several different powers that JARVIS was as advanced as he was. No stupid-ass questions about how Tony had changed; JARVIS had looked at the available data and extrapolated cleanly. Tony had left the Tower in the company of Steve Rogers with the mutual verbal intention of spending time together, with the added connotation from body language and tone of voice that the time would be at least partly sexual, in the time-honored way of accentuating and deepening a pack bond. Tony had not left Rogers’ apartment in nearly six days, confirmed by checking all cameras in the vicinity. Tony had been a beta six days ago, and was now an omega. Rogers was an alpha. Only alpha semen could turn a beta into an omega. Tony had never expressed any interest in becoming an omega. Rogers’ unusual body chemistry made his hormonal levels unusually high, and had expressed constant concern for Tony not fitting into the Avengers’ pack. And Tony’s heart rate and vocal patterns indicated extreme stress and anger.

Therefore Steve Rogers had forcefully turned Tony Stark into an omega. The fact that Tony hadn’t called for help was a moot point; Rogers was capable of physically overpowering nearly any standard human, and once heat had taken effect, along with forcible bonding, Tony wouldn’t have wanted to get away.

Until now.

Tony was torn, the bubbling desire for revenge, for just firing a missile into Rogers’ apartment had have done with it warring with the cold, nauseated feeling that destroying his bonded would destroy any chance of getting through heat quickly ever again. The quieter, cooler part of him, slowly trying to assert itself through the tangle of raging emotions, wanted to see what Fury would do if he found out Captain America had gone so far off the rails; that might be the only way to get justice without having to announce to the whole world what had happened.

“We’re going discrete now, JARVIS,” Tony said.

“Very well, sir. Dr. Banner is in his laboratory with Dr. Ross, Agent Barton is currently in the kitchen on his floor, Agent Romanov is utilizing the jogging track on level sixty-four, and Mr. Odinsson is viewing Formula One racing in the communal media room.”

Tony had a moment’s pause at the apparent non-sequitur before his brain kicked in. Even if Thor was bonded, the hell if he would get near any alpha while reeking of post-coital pheromones. Barton would be reasonably safe, Natasha… probably. But he needed to see Bruce. Bruce’s control was legendary, and even his alter-ego was safe, at least in that way. The Hulk didn’t have any sexual expression; like a child, he was entirely neutral. And Bruce Banner he trusted. Tony could have flown somewhere else, but he _needed_ the lab equipment in the Tower, and he needed help from someone _now_. With Betty Ross there, beta and Bruce’s bonded, there was no chemical way Tony could rile them. He just needed a clear route to the labs so no one else would catch what had been done to him until he’d gotten some kind of treatment. Or at least a damn decontamination shower.

He trusted Rhodey even more – hell, even if Rhodey was an alpha, he would trust him with this, and Pepper, fuck, Pepper was his rock, beta-solid and understanding. But Pepper was in Hong Kong and Rhodey was in Cali and- fuck it.

“JARVIS, get me to the landing pad by the lab and initiate calls to Pepper, Honeybear, and Big Science.”

“Immediately, sir.”

He was just touching down as the connection was made, Pepper’s welcome face coming up on his HUD.

“Pep-.”

“Tony, what’s going-?” Pepper froze and studied the display of Tony’s face in her screen. “I’m on my way back. I’ll be there by morning. _Don’t leave_ until I get there.”

She clicked off the call with an abruptness that Tony actually sorta adored. Something was bad. Talking about it over the phone was never Tony’s strong suit. And she’d drop everything to see what the problem was, judging by the expression on his face. _Thank you._

“Tony, you done with whatever you were doing? You haven’t answered your calls in a week.” Rhodey answered, hard on the heels of Pepper’s terminated call.

“No.”

Rhodey had been looking off to the side, fiddling with something, but snapped his attention back to his phone screen at Tony’s bare, one-word response.

“Yeah? What’s going on?”

“Drop by. I owe you lunch.”

Rhodey came as alert as if Tony had just called about another alien attack on New York.

“I’ll be there by midnight.”

“It’ll be lunch time somewhere.” Tony couldn’t quite remember how to do the smiling quip he was supposed to in order to make this easy and neutral. He really, really wanted that ability back.

“Midnight at the latest,” Rhodey said, and the screen abruptly went dark.

The relief made him a little faint. He had back-up on its way.

He took slow, easy breaths in and out and repeated that to himself several times.

_Back-up is on the way._

“Sir?” JARVIS prompted.

“Call Banner.”

The picture didn’t activate when the call connected, which meant Bruce was on speakerphone, listening as he went through one experiment or another. Just like always.

“Tony? You and Steve made it back finally?” Bruce asked absently, a few beeps sounding in the background as he fiddled with some instrument.

Tony had to exert an uncomfortable amount of control not to laugh, or possibly scream. “What did you think I was doing for a week?” he asked, determinedly neutral.

Bruce paused, and Tony could almost see his head come up, like a deer suddenly hearing a hunter’s footstep, knowing danger was near.

“Steve called… he said you two were having a little pack time.”

Tony couldn’t stop the bark of bitter laughter that forced its way past his lips.

“Tony?” Bruce asked very gently.

“I’ll meet you in the lab.”

“What happened?”

“One minute. In the lab,” Tony repeated, and touched down on the landing platform. The phone clicked off, and with a curt command to JARVIS, Tony kept the suit on. No way in hell he was going to broadcast pheromones in any public space in the tower. He reeked his new status, even to his own nose. Pepper might kill him for leaving Iron Man scuff marks on the floor, but better that than the alternative.

He froze in place for a moment, struck by the sickening thought that maybe what Steve had said at his apartment hadn’t just been the product of the man’s deranged mind. Maybe it had been more than pre-meditated rape, maybe it had been a conspiracy. Steve had said he wanted Tony to need “us.” No one had come looking for him for a week. Pepper and Rhodey had excuses, but did the others who lived in the Tower really think that Tony would go on a one week pack-sex bender?

Maybe they had, maybe they’d wanted this as much as Steve, maybe Bruce had determined which of the alpha Avengers had the best shot at changing Tony, maybe-.

“Tony?”

Bruce was standing in the doorway, hair tousled from sleeping on the couch in the lab instead of making it up to the suite he shared with Betty. And Betty herself was right at his shoulder, looking as fabulous as always, despite the fact she’d probably shared that couch with Bruce. Her easy presence beside him, the signature calm of a very securely-bonded beta with her mate, dispelled Tony’s paranoia like a soap bubble popping. Bruce would never… Never.

Tony hadn’t made it down to the lab in his promised minute, and Tony was never late for science.

“Are you all right?” Bruce asked.

“Lab,” Tony said curtly, and started walking. He used tracking software to see the worried glances Betty and Bruce shared before following after him, and felt a little comforted by that. They cared. They’d been worried.

_Back up is here._

The doors to the lab slid shut behind them, and JARVIS clicked on the high-privacy settings, opaquing the windows and putting the security feeds into separate servers.

“What happened with Steve?” Bruce asked, eyes narrowing a little as Tony shift uneasily in the suit. He still hadn’t deigned to crack his faceplate, and Tony could see Bruce’s breathing deepen a hair as he began to regulate his calm. He didn’t blame the man a bit; silence from Tony seemed to usually presage something of dire import.

Like, you know, him dying. He never should have let Bruce and Pepper compare their Tony-wrangling notes.

“What did he tell you?” Tony asked warily. Steve had to have told the others _something_. Tony had been too focused on what was happening to him to pay attention to what Steve might have been doing behind his back, but surely he must have called or texted the team at least once to assuage them that he and Tony were all right.

_All right, everything’s fine, just fucking Tony into an omega, TTYL._

Tony clenched one hand into a fist hard enough that the servos whined slightly.

“The same thing you did,” Bruce said softly.

Tony shivered inside the confines of the suit. In their last battle, Steve had had everyone clicking so smoothly it had been like driving one of his favorite cars. Every Avenger was in tune with the fight, with each other, with the kind of effortless aid and quasi-telepathic sensitivity to danger that a close-bonded pack shared. Tony was in it, but not quite _of_ it, and he’d been impressed, almost shockingly so. He’d been able to see a few ways out of dangers no one else had, and had helped his pack as best he could, more proud than he could even say. Steve had looked exasperated, like normal, but that day his irritation couldn’t shake Tony’s mood. 

For once, Tony actually thought he got it. For maybe the first time in his adult life, Tony could _see_ the strength of a pack he was a part of, and cared enough to want to strengthen that bond. Steve was probably the best alpha Tony had ever heard of, the best man and leader anyone could want for their pack. He wanted Steve to stop sighing at his break-away runs. He wanted to understand, to be understood. He had wanted in, and Tony hadn’t wanted to deliberately bond since he’d been a kid. Pepper, Happy, Rhodey, those had been slow-burn bonds of long association, like Stane, and killing Obadiah… For him that had been like cutting off his own arm. He hadn’t thought he’d want to deliberately bond again.

Until a week ago. He hadn’t intended to go even as far as they had before Steve had wrested control away from him, but he’d wanted to start. He’d wanted to _try._

That’s the message he’d sent everyone. If Steve had sent the same, no wonder no one had come looking for him; they’d all been holding their breaths, waiting for the good news.

Tony popped his faceplate.

Both Bruce and Betty looked like they’d just been sucker-punched as Tony’s scent, unfortunately concentrated by nervous sweat and confinement, rolled out to taint the air.

Bruce’s nostrils flared, and Tony could see the muscles of his chest and belly working as he suddenly went into a deliberate deep-breathing pattern, maintaining his calm and keeping the Hulk at bay. And that was bad, very bad, because Bruce’s control was good enough that Tony hadn’t seen him struggle with it since Loki had put his mind-whammy on all of them on the Helicarrier.

“My God,” Betty said, her hand firm on Bruce’s shoulder, grounding him. “Steve?” The shock in her voice, on her face, and Bruce’s near-Incident-level reaction was perversely more reassuring than anything else they could have said or done.

Tony jerked his head in agreement. 

“Sit,” Bruce ground out, determination winning out over Hulk-out rage. “We’ll see what we can do.”

“Sir, would you like to put Iron Man through diagnostics?” JARVIS said suddenly, giving Tony a perfectly legitimate and normal excuse to shuck his armor that didn’t make him think he was deliberately disarming. Exposing himself. Tony went through a couple deep breathing exercises himself and nodded. The disassembly arms descended from the ceiling and began the sequence.

“What the hell happened?” Bruce asked, as JARVIS delicately disassembled Iron Man.

“Fuck if I know,” Tony said, sitting gingerly on a padded stool as the last of the armor was whisked away. Betty hovered near him, a needle and blood-pressure cuff on the table next to her, and raised an inquiring eyebrow. She appeared calm, but with the same underlying anger Bruce shared, and smelled like the calming chamomile tea Bruce brewed on a hot plate in the lab. Tony stuck out his arm and she quickly took several blood samples, never touching him more than necessary. Even so, even so… Tony was relaxed here. He felt safe with them.

He honestly felt safe, and drawing on, oh say, that really horrific time he’d been captured in the Sandbox, he knew it took longer than two hours to feel safe again afterwards, even once at home. It had taken him months to find an even keel after Afghanistan. Not hours. Tony put his head down as Betty fed her samples into various machines, breathing slowly and carefully as Bruce as both scientists tried to find him a miracle. He could smell them both so easily, Betty’s chamomile and disinfectant, Bruce’s vanilla and spice with the odd acrid tang from his internal passenger. He knew their scents, he’d know them anywhere, but it had never been so easy to smell them before.

 _Omega senses,_ he realized with a sinking stomach. Their sense of smell was always so much more powerful than a beta, or at least that’s what he had observed and had told to him. 

“We were just… bonding,” Tony continued, the words trickling out of him slowly as Betty and Bruce worked. It was easier when their backs were turned, when they weren’t looking at him, their ears nevertheless pricked up. “And he didn’t stop.” He said the last in a rush and clamped his mouth shut on the rest.

Bruce stopped what he was doing and pushed away from the lab bench, a decidedly olive tone to his skin. The acrid Hulk smell took an upswing as Bruce physically struggled for control, and Betty turned away from her work to put her hands on his shoulders. Eye-to-eye, they stared at each other as Bruce fought the Hulk back down, Betty’s fierce words soothing the savage beast at least enough for Bruce to take the wheel again. After long, long moments, the air so tense even Tony forgot his own situation for a minute, Bruce finally turned around, green just fading from his eyes.

“We have to tell Fury,” Bruce said, his voice completely flat with suppressed anger. “And the others. He _hurt_ you, Tony.”

Tony opened his mouth to object, a lifetime of near-lone running wanting him to deal with this on his own. And stopped as Bruce and Betty bracketed him, not quite touching, their scents soothing even as both nearly shook with the same rage and disgust Tony was feeling.

His head snapped up at that realization, that their anger at Steve was helping drain the nigh-poisonous ball of loathing that had settled in Tony’s gut. That kind of empathy didn’t just happen, not unless you were…

_“We need you Tony. I want to make sure you need us.”_

Steve’s words came back to him, unwanted but right. Tony had initially wanted a pack bond. And he’d gotten it. Bruce, Betty, all the Avengers were bonded, and though Tony had been resisting a full bond, by “virtue” of Steve’s actions he’d settled into the spaces they’d been keeping open for him in the pack.

He hadn’t wanted it this way, wouldn’t have wished what he’d gone through even on an enemy, but right now he was too wrought up to resist the single bright point he’d been given.

Tony opened his arms a little, an instant of terrified vulnerability quieted as Bruce and Betty nuzzled him gently, a simple and intimate welcome that thawed a little of the fear that had been choking him all day.

“We’ll help you,” Betty said fiercely. 

“And so will the others,” Bruce said. “Please, let them. Let Fury know about Steve.”

“There is no need.”

Tony turned sharply to see Thor, Clint, and Natasha just inside the open doorway.

“JARVIS, what the hell?”

“Sir, you did not lock the door.”

“I put up a Do Not Disturb sign.”

“Not possible to disturb us anymore than we are already,” Clint said, arms crossed across his chest, eyes as hard as they were on the range.

“We did not overhear,” Thor said, crossing the floor in a few strides to kneel before Tony’s stool. “We felt your pain when you entered the Tower. My friend, my brother, my packmate, what has been done is the basest treachery by a man I once considered worthy of being followed. Believe me when I say I know this betrayal cannot go unanswered.”

Thor _knew_. He knew, deep in his bones, how it was when someone turned on you. He understood. And he was kneeling. He was subsuming his alpha instincts to let Tony know Thor expected no submission from him. A look over at Clint saw some of the same empathy in his eyes, and Tony wondered who’d fucked him over. And how he’d missed that pain before.

And they knew too, it had been Steve. He hadn’t had to tell them. He hadn’t had to tell them out loud, he hadn’t been forced to relieve everything. This… was how it was supposed to work. This was how a pack, a _real_ pack behaved. Tony swallowed hard.

“You can make this work,” Natasha said, her voice soft. “It doesn’t feel like it, I know. It feels like your body is a runaway train, but you can make this work.”

And she knew too. He knew she knew. He knew she hadn’t always been the way she was now, but she’d learned how to conquer herself.

“I’ll help show you,” she said.

“Me too,” Bruce said, with a gentle touch on Tony’s shoulder. “I have some tricks to help.”

“And the first trick is getting Cap and-” Clint began.

“No.” Tony interrupted Clint before he could get going. “I want to, shit, I nearly did him in myself, but the asshole wouldn’t suffer nearly enough. Get Fury.” He swallowed. “I want him to pay.”

Clint’s initial shock at Tony’s words gave way to a nasty smile. “Fury will cut him to shreds.” 

“That’ll do for a start,” Tony all but snarled, and bared his teeth. The answering growls from his pack helped fill some of the empty space inside him.

\--

One of Nick Fury’s virtues was his decisiveness. He could gather intel, nurture an assent, string someone along for months if necessary, but when the time came to pull the trigger, there was no hesitation.

“I’m bringing you all in. This will be dealt with now.”

It was Bruce who’d given the bare-bones explanation to Fury over video comm, with everyone else backing up Tony behind him. The feeling of comfort it gave him to have the others close… Tony was relaxing into it even as he recognized its source with a sinking heart. He was an omega, one still giving off post-heat pheromones, and the natural instinct of the pack was to protect the omega against anyone but his alpha. 

But they _were_ his pack, and his friends, and their anger hadn’t been any less than Tony’s when they’d figured out what had happened. If he could contemplate destroying his alpha, if he could use his anger and logic to override instinct, they could too.

He had to believe that. Pepper and Rhodey were still hours away, and he didn’t want to think of Steve Rogers curled up and sleeping in his apartment like nothing bad had happened for a moment longer. There were times to cultivate patience.

And there were times to pull the trigger.

Tony stood and let JARVIS armor him up again for the trip in the Quinjet, inexplicably missing the closeness of the others as the metal separated him from the mingled scents. But he wasn’t separate from them. He could feel their eyes on them, the faint tugs on his heart that told him they were there. Back up was already here.

\--

“We have ways of dealing with betrayal, Stark. I’m going to talk to him for you.”

Tony’s anger flared briefly at being handled, but Fury cut him off before he could even get going, effortlessly turning aside the collective pack outrage the Avengers were emitting.

“The last thing you need is to be in a room with Steve Rogers. Until you stabilize, you’re going to be vulnerable. You’re in my pack too, Stark, and I’m not going to let this lie any more than they would. Do you all understand?”

Fury was a beta, an astonishingly low-key one, but it was much more than his dynamic that had led him to the Directorship of SHIELD. He understood the sometimes-volatile men and women under his command, and in one way or another, they were all part of his pack. Even Thor’s anger, growing every moment he was holding back, could recognize that. If any of the Avengers saw Steve now, he wouldn’t get the justice he deserved before the confrontation dissolved into a deadly pack brawl.

“Stark, I want you in the observation room. The rest of you, stay here. I want to find out what the hell was going through his head. After that… we’ll see to his punishment, I will promise you all that.”

“We’ll be waiting,” Thor said darkly, tiny sparks of lightning beginning to crawl across his armor, the barest hint of his true state of mind.

“And ready,” Natasha added, fingers flexing like claws. Behind her, Clint was deceptively relaxed, idly tracing the side of his vest where Tony _knew_ he kept his throwing knives. Against the wall, Bruce had taken a seat and closed his eyes. If he opened them, he’d be sporting the same lighter shade of olive green he’d been showing off-and-on since Tony popped his faceplate.

Their anger fed back on him as he left the room, and gave him a little more of the strength he needed if he was going to lay eyes on Rogers.

\--

Tony had needed it even through the glass of the observation window when Steve sauntered in, muscles rolling under his tight shirt and pants, a visual siren call that made Tony flinch, feeling like he should be out there with him, rubbing up against him, drinking in his scent-.

He shut his eyes and took a couple breaths of the neutral air before regaining his composure enough to look again.

“What the hell were you thinking?” Fury’s voice was deadly cold, and his frosty tone made Rogers flinch visibly. “I am curious to know what was going through your damn mind, what justifications you made to think this was all right.”

Fury didn’t bother to name Steve’s crime. And Steve didn’t ask. Maybe some little twitch of that shame and guilt Tony had heard in his voice was still working in the depths of his soul.

Steve stared straight ahead, unable to meet Fury’s eye. “The pack,” he said, almost too quietly to be heard.

“The pack,” Fury repeated, the word sharp.

“Tony wouldn’t let the pack come together.”

Fury remained silent, arms crossed, not giving Steve any encouragement one way or the other. He could keep talking and hope he wasn’t lengthening the rope that would be used to hang him, or stay silent and hope his few words wouldn’t condemn him. A long moment later, Steve spoke again.

“We were alone,” he said slowly. “Sir, we were alone. Every one of us had been alone for most of our lives. But when we came together during the Battle of Manhattan, I felt it. I felt the pack forming between us. I knew it was slower for Tony because he couldn't scent us through his armor, but I thought that would come in time. We’d be working together, training together, and I thought everyone would be able to come together. We’d all finally have a pack.”

“Every single one of the Avengers has had a pack at some point in time, Rogers,” Fury said, with not a hint of warmth softening his tone. “Even Stark. He might have a very small pack outside the Avengers, but he has one. Potts, Rhodes, and Hogan. Stane used to be on the list too, until he turned. That’s a betrayal not ever forgotten, or forgiven.”

“Sir, I read his file-.”

“Captain, if you’ve read his file, your memory is exceptional, so I don’t know why I have to tell you that Tony Stark has very excellent reasons for not immediately strong pack-bonding with dominant alphas.”

Steve paled a little, and Tony felt an entirely platonic urge to kiss Fury for systematically taking Steve apart. This was a hell of a lot more effective and satisfying than trying to rip Steve’s dick off and feed it to him to get the point across.

Cleaner, too.

“If Tony wanted to be a lone wolf, he could have done it without disrupting the rest of the pack! He keeps trying to separate us, interrupting bonding time-” Steve stopped himself and hung his head before Fury could rev up his glare. “He wanted us around, but didn’t want us _together._ ”

“Packs take time.”

“We didn’t have time, sir! We could be called at any time, for anything. Without the pack bond we’d be no better than individuals, and that can be so dangerous. We could have lost each other before we even…” Steve’s hands clenched into fists and his eyes closed. He was actually starting to shake very slightly. “I could have lost him.”

Fury looked up, but not at Steve, back across the room, into the mirror Tony was watching from. “War bonds can be the strongest and most profound of pack bonds.”

 _“I know that.”_ Steve’s voice had dropped to an alpha’s territorial growl, and Tony had to grip the edge of the window frame to keep his knees from going weak. He gouged the nails of his other hand into his palm until they nearly drew blood to get himself back under control. Thank fuck he wasn’t actually in the same room; Steve would be throwing off a truckload of pheromones as Fury continued to pick apart his alpha superiority complex.

“You had one of the smoothest-functioning packs in the war, and most of that you attributed, rightly, to the fact that the Howling Commandos had pack-bonded hard and fast when you rescued them from that HYDRA base. It helped that Barnes was already part of your pack, and together with the Commandos, you were the poster children on how teamwork between the Allies would win the war.”

Fury wasn’t talking just to Steve anymore, but Steve didn’t seem to realize it.

“And then Barnes died, you were frozen, and when you woke up your entire pack was dead.”

Steve went rigid and still, aside from the heaving of his chest.

 _Jesus wept,_ Tony thought, heart sinking. The man had been in _bond shock_ from losing his pack, had been desperately trying to fill that void with the Avengers. That Tony was blood kin to someone who’d been park of that pack, even if only peripherally, had only exacerbated everything Steve had been going through. The whole sickening situation could be written off as Rogers’ temporary insanity in the face of his trauma.

_Oh fuck, Fury, tell me you aren’t… so help me God if you get him off the hook I will find some way of pulling down SHIELD brick by brick around your ears while it burns…_

“There is no justification for what you have done. If you think your history will somehow negate the fact you raped someone with the intention of forced bonding through induced omegahood, no matter how you try to dress it up in pack dynamics, you are sorely mistaken.”

“He could have died,” Steve said, his voice very faint. “Stark could have died if-.”

“Any pack is made up of individuals. No individuals, no pack. You force-bonded him, you made him give up his free will-.”

“I never would have abused that!” Steve protested, his growing thick. “There just had to be some way to get through to him, to help keep him safe when he would have thrown his life away trying to take everything on himself when we could have been there to help him! We nearly lost him in the Chitauri attack before I’d gotten a chance to know him. It was the only way…”

“No. It was not. A five-minute conversation with him and he might have listened. If not to you, then to Banner, or Romanov, or Barton. You could have worked through them. You were the pack alpha – you were supposed to help direct your people! If he wouldn’t bond with you all right away, it was your job to figure out why, not-.”

“Give him no choice,” Steve finished, a little bit of sanity coming back into his face, and with it, real fear.

“I think you know what happens next. I’ve been speaking with the rest of the Avengers. Given the nature of your group, we can’t take this before the media. But I think Stark would have appreciated pack justice anyway.”

Tony bared his teeth in nearly an alpha’s feral, challenge-ready smile as Steve went white. Pack justice was old, the ancient dark side of humanity’s evolution from their lupine roots that was universal across all cultures. As old as bonding, as old as packs, when the lead alpha failed, the pack could determine how to punish an errant member on their own. 

Steve might well turn white; Thor had looked _pissed._

“Tell me, anyone pass around a book back in the day in France? The Little Prince?”

Steve nodded.

“You remember what the fox said that might pertain to this situation?”

Steve nodded again and took a deep breath. “’You remain responsible, forever, for what you have tamed.’”

“Tony Stark is not, nor will he ever be, tame. But, if you survive your pack, you know what you have to do.”

“Take care of him.”

“ _Listen_ to him. If Stark wants to take care of his heats with drugs and toys, you don’t even look in his damn direction. If he picks another alpha, you never touch them or challenge them. If he has a fit of insanity and decide he’d rather get it over and done with fast and calls you, you drop whatever the hell you’re doing and respond. It doesn’t matter if he hates your guts and won’t even look at you, it doesn’t matter if you are busy with anything short of life-or-death, you respond immediately. You made this mess. You will do whatever it takes to make amends for the rest of your life.”

Tony’s breath whooshed out of his lungs as he considered that carefully. 

Steve just stared at Fury, pale as the stars on his uniform, mouth open, eyes seeing something that left him horror-stricken.

“I… I didn’t think…”

“That was obvious.” Fury’s voice was dripping with contempt.

Tony was irrationally proud of Fury. He couldn’t have delivered that line any better.

“I was trying to help us.”

“You didn’t give him a chance, or a choice, and I will be damned if I will let anyone ruin one of my people the way I was.”

Tony clutched the window frame again, this time in a very different kind of shock. Steve rather looked like he needed a window frame of his own. Fury? 

“Sir, I thought you were a beta.”

“I was. Then someone who wasn’t as ‘protective’ as you decided to turn me against my own organization when I fell into enemy hands.”

Steve looked down at the ground again, his entire posture one of utter submission.

“Go face your pack. If you survive, we’ll talk again.”

Steve collapsed where he stood, dropping to his knees with his head nearly to the floor when Fury stalked out. Tony thought he heard Steve say something over and over again, in time with Fury’s footsteps.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry…”

“How?” Tony demanded, the second Fury entered the observation room. “Your scent, you’re a beta. How the hell did you reverse it?”

“I didn’t.”

“Bullshit! Tell me!”

“Volkov had me for a year. He fucked me twice a day, regular as clockwork, asking questions about SHIELD, about the local bases, about anything that would help his organization. Soon as my heats started, he’d deprive me unless I talked. I held out twelve hours the first time. They bombed the safehouse two days after I talked.” Fury looked off into the middle distance and idly rubbed one wrist. “He thought he had me, and got a little careless with the handcuffs. I got my hands on a kitchen knife.”

Fury tugged up his shirt and revealed horrific scars crisscrossing his abdomen.

“I won’t show you the rest. I had two choices; I want to make damn sure you have more.”

Tony had to put his wrist up to his mouth to help him stop throwing up. He knew what other scars he would see if Fury had decided to drop trou. His choice. He could have chosen to open his veins or stab himself in the heart. But he’d chosen instead to mince his own ovaries, puncture his uterus, probably cutting his own testicles away and mangling his lubrication glands and prostate so he could never feel pleasure, never be swamped with hormones again. He’d chosen self-castration as the biggest “fuck you” to his captor he could imagine.

Physically present or not, Nick Fury had the biggest set of balls Tony had ever heard of.

“It nearly killed me. Volkov dropped me at the bombing site, figuring I’d be dead before SHIELD could save me. He was wrong. I told the Director where he was hiding; Volkov was dust in an hour.”

“Kinda making all of this feel like kiddy pool stuff in comparison, Fury.” At least Tony had been left whole…

Fury snorted. “Volkov was drug-dealing weapons’ smuggler without a single compassionate bone in his body. He was a disgusting excuse for a human being and I knew that going in against him. Rogers blindsided you in every sense of the word for reasons he could make justifiable in his own head. But he’s capable of remorse. And change.”

“He’s _insane_ ,” Tony nearly hissed. “He is out of his goddamn mind. After Thor and the others take him apart, I don’t want to see him again.”

Fury was silent for a long moment and tugged his coat closed, wafting the faint scent of Steve’s pheromones past Tony’s nose. He caught himself before leaning into the delicious, intoxicating aroma and shot Fury a glare.

“I think there’s an argument that he did have a break with reality. But he’s about to get that reality check brought home. Volkov would have never kneeled and begged for forgiveness.”

“He’s not kneeling to me.”

“He will. Tell me, Stark, what do you want to do?”

“Go on suppressants,” Tony snapped, biting off the unsaid _idiot._

“You’re newly-made. Your hormone levels won’t stabilize for at least a year, maybe longer, considering who changed you. Suppressants might not even work; they could even make your heats worse. You’re stuck riding them out, one way or another. Banner will tell you the same thing the doctors said would have happened to me.”

“Fuck.” Tony looked away, balling his hands up, then making himself relax. “ _Fuck!_ ”

He didn’t think he could make Fury’s choice – even if he employed surgeons instead of mutilating himself with a kitchen knife, he couldn’t see how castrating himself would make this any better. He could try to hold out with toys and Bruce’s meditations and whatever drugs would help take the edge off, though he’d spend a long time trying to figure out what would satisfy his hormonal breeding imperative. He could find someone else to help. 

He didn’t even consider forcing Steve to be his personal sex toy. A faint whiff of his hormones could nearly undo him – once he put himself back into his power, there would be no forcing involved. Tony would be able to get through heat fast, sure, and probably would hate himself, Steve, or both afterward. Trust Fury to bring it up and make him think it over before his hormones took over again. And they would; it was inevitable.

“Are you ready to watch this?”

Tony looked up to see his team file in the room, dropping their weapons by the door as they surrounded the still-kneeling Steve in a loose circle. Over the speaker, Tony could hear their growls as they got ready to pounce, teeth showing, crouching in readiness to spring into action.

“I challenge you,” Thor rumbled, nearly incomprehensible in his anger. “I followed you because I thought you were a good man, Steven Rogers, but instead you showed the worst of yourself to one who was just beginning to trust your judgment.”

Steve lurched to his feet, white to the lips, chest heaving as he desperately sucked in air.

“I did what I had to do for the good of the pack.”

Natasha stepped in, fast, and backhanded Steve hard enough to whip his head to the side before sliding back. “No excuses.”

“I was afraid for his life.”

Clint moved that time, with an open-ended slap strong enough to split the skin of Steve’s cheek. “Screw you!”

“We need him.”

Bruce stepped in and gripped Steve’s hair tight, forcing his head back. “Not like that.”

Steve shook his head as Bruce stepped away, and slowly dropped into a combat stance, meeting each of his pack’s eyes with a haunted gaze. “Come on!”

Tony felt himself howling through the glass with the rest of his pack as they charged, hands gripping the window frame for dear life as his alpha went down under the Avengers’ initial attack.


	2. Chapter 2

Steve couldn’t hold his own against four people trained to fight monsters and gods, but he was damn sure trying. Betrayer and disgraced, about to be evicted from the leadership he’d held through some of the worst times his pack had ever seen, he still wasn’t going to let them oust him without a fight. It was for the best; if he backed down, there would always be the lingering question of whether or not the new leader was in charge because he’d won respect, or because Steve had allowed him.

There could be no doubt, not in the Avengers.

The others batted him back and forth like a cat with a mouse, Steve sometimes getting strikes in – an elbow to Natasha’s ribs, a fist to Clint’s shoulder, a knee crashing against Thor’s armor, but more often than not he was contained, his blows dodged or blocked, the pack unity he’d strived so hard for now turned against him. Bruce was holding back, only pushing Steve back into the fray when he might have tried to retreat, and Steve should be grateful for it; the Hulk was too close to the surface to let Bruce try to get his hands dirty. If he let the Hulk out, he’d level the building before anyone would be able to calm him down, minimum.

At first Tony watched the others descend on Steve with a rush of righteous anger, wanting to see that pretty face bruised and bleeding, that perfect body hurting at much as he had. It was the basest feeling of revenge, and the only way it could have been more visceral was for him to be delivering some of that justice himself. Steve had robbed him of that independence, made it damn near impossible to face him on his own, had given Tony a weakness he didn’t yet know how to protect, and had made him depend on his pack to get any kind of payback. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust his pack, it was the fact that he _had_ to let them take charge that rankled more than anything.

But as Steve grew progressively more bruised, as blood sprayed and flesh pulped, as bone broke and dirt was ground into his skin, Tony started to flinch at every new strike. Steve was barely able to heave himself upright, and staggered drunkenly as he threw himself into the fray again and again. That indomitable determination that made him so good at what he did refused to let him quit, even when he was beaten. It was actually starting to make Tony feel sick.

“Stop it,” Tony said quietly, his stomach churning as Bruce caught Steve and tumbled him to the floor at the others’ feet again. “He’s- he’s had enough.” Clint hauled him up by the front of his ripped shirt and struck him across the face hard enough to make blood spray and his nose break. Steve deserved pain, he deserved to be punished, but… Natasha stepped in to lay a devastating triple combo that left Steve reeling and gasping from blows to his gut. Tony was having trouble catching his breath as Steve doubled over.

“Fury…” Tony said, sparing him a look before riveting his eyes to the scene beyond the glass. Thor was next, and his powerful blow threw Steve across the room hard enough to crack plaster and shatter his arm. 

Steve’s face was covered with blood and lined with agony, but his eyes were clear in their circles of bruising as he looked straight at the observation window and pleaded, “Tony, please, I’m sorry…”

“That’s _enough!_ ” Tony yelled, anxiety reaching a peak, unable to stomach another minute. It was enough, Steve had been punished enough. He turned to go out there only to have Fury catch his elbow in an implacable grip.

“No.”

“He said-.”

“Stark, no. Don’t let him do that to you. He doesn’t even realize what he’s asking you to do, not really.”

Tony tried to jerk himself away, but Fury was relentless.

“After Volkov died, I spent the better part of a year wondering what the hell was missing from my life. I’d spend days alone, or mooning over a beer like a rejected prom date, and have no idea why. I couldn’t even bring myself to look at anyone else, and for the longest time I thought it was just the physical.” Fury kept his grip strong as Bruce put his mouth next to Steve’s ear and said something that turned him pale under his bruises and blood. “I’d killed my bonded, Stark. I hated him, and he was a worthless scumbag, but I’d been hardwired to him and that’s not all glandular.” Fury tapped Tony’s forehead with his other hand. “Rogers is in there, and you absolutely cannot listen to him, not until you’re solid again. I didn’t even have the pheromonal pull, but when I hear Volkov’s voice on recordings, to this day, it still affects me.”

Fury turned off the sound to the room and turned Tony partially away from the carnage. “Even if Rogers does a completely sincere about-face, right now, all he has to do is issue you a command and you’d have to stop yourself before you were all over it. He doesn’t quite comprehend the magnitude of what he’s done. And neither do you.”

Tony pulled away and this time Fury released his grip. “I should fucking think I do-.”

“You were about to call off your pack when they’d barely gotten warmed up. You used your anger to be able to leave him right after bonding. Use it now.”

Tony froze in place, unwanted compassion warring with his anger, the desire to have his pack whole fighting against Steve’s place in it. _Shit._ He closed his eyes, blocked out the sight of Steve, brought up a really annoying earworm of a song to run through his head to counter the memory of Steve’s voice, held onto his rage in an entirely counter-Hulk-out manner, and rode out the unwanted waves of pity and protective desire. Fury didn’t touch him again, didn’t say another word, just stood quietly, watching the fight on the other side of the glass with a level calm Tony had never possessed.

He couldn’t hear much of the fight, only feel the occasional vibration from what had to be Steve’s body hitting walls, and he let it go on, he forced himself to let it go on until he could open his eyes and see Steve kneeling, more than one limb deformed from broken bones, surrounded by the rest of the Avengers. His chest was heaving, and he held his side with his one good arm, the other dangling uselessly. His head was down and his neck exposed in the most profound posture of submission. 

Fury glanced over at Tony, and took a half step away from the door. The Avengers were about to establish a new pack hierarchy, and this time Tony wouldn’t let himself hang back. He needed them. One hand clenched into a fist and he cursed inside his own mind at the echo of Steve’s words in his brain. But he more than needed them; he wanted them, he wanted to be part of their pack. He’d wanted that before Steve had changed him, and he refused to let spite drive him away from friends like these. Tony opened the door.

The mingled scents of everyone nearly bowled him over, the scent of blood and Steve tugging on his instincts _hard_. For a minute he felt an entirely different kind of rage, the kind that would have made him throw himself at the Avengers, ripping and tearing for _daring_ to touch his alpha, his bonded. Just for a minute. Just a sickening moment where his control almost slipped before he caught himself and focused on everyone else. On Bruce’s subtle spice-over-omega, on Barton’s cool aftershave nearly worn away by sweat to reveal his more subtle beta scent. On Thor’s distinctively different bonded-alpha scent, and Natasha’s pheromonal perfume emphasizing her alpha nature for this fight.

There was a heavy expectancy in the air as Tony slowly crossed to join the others, keeping his eyes off Steve with an almost superhuman effort. He watched the others instead, and saw first Bruce, then Clint, lift their chins very slightly to Natasha and Thor, accepting their places in the pack. No matter that everyone had their own strengths and weaknesses, areas of expertise and times when each had to lead the others or fight on their own, there still had to be some way of knowing who stood where when necessary. Bruce and Clint were used to their positions, but Tony could feel the tension between Thor and Natasha and him.

Tony hadn’t done this since… Jesus, he must have been sixteen, maybe? After his parents died and before he’d taken over the company. Obi and him had known each other for years, but when Tony had been being groomed to lead Stark Industries, they’d had to reevaluate the bond they’d had. Tony was the heir, Tony was the brilliant engineer with the ideas, Tony was the charismatic salesman, Tony was the beta that had to find the chutzpah to politely overrank the one alpha in his two-person pack so the board would listen to him for a change. Years of being the smartest kid in the room had given him that brass, though not a lot of consideration for how Obi would feel.

Well, they’d hammered that out. Over murder attempts, kidnapping, more murder attempts, and then actual murder. Tony liked to think he’d grown since then. He’d graduated from full-on death to nigh-lethal pack justice.

It was possible he was still a hot mess mentally, emotionally, and physically from what had happened over the past week. Just maybe. 

“Natasha,” Thor said, looking down at her, barely winded from what they’d all been through. His brow was furrowed though, and he looked nearly as conflicted as Tony; the stress on everyone’s faces bore out the same feeling. Steve had been their pack alpha, he’d been _everyone’s_ pack alpha; this wasn’t just Tony’s problem, it was all of theirs. 

That little factoid of revelation was as heartbreaking as it was heartwarming.

Yes, he was still officially a hot mess, Tony decided suddenly.

Natasha looked up at Thor (not baring her throat, just having to look up to catch his eyes), and he bowed his head slightly to her. A conciliatory, not submissive gesture, but for an alien prince destined to rule a whole other world? He’d given as much to Steve. He’d trusted as much.

Tony’s stomach clenched when Natasha turned to look at him, waiting patiently for him to make his move, utterly ignoring their shattered ex-alpha at their feet, no matter how excruciatingly aware of him Tony was. He willed himself to move, wanting to offer something, anything to the new pack leader. To be able to do that in front of Steve would be as harsh a blow to his over-developed alpha instincts as Tony could manage right now without having joined in the fight himself.

But moving those few inches to greet Natasha, to just touch her, when Steve was _right there_ , was going to take more strength than Tony thought he had right now. Steve just kneeling there, vulnerable, hurt, even if he hadn’t said a word, even if Natasha’s scent was overwhelming his right now, was nearly too much to take.

_Do it, just do it, just lean the fuck forward and SHAKE HER DAMN HAND OR SOMETHING, come on, come on, come on…_

Tony was hesitating, he was _hesitant_ , and that was one word he’d never thought to use to describe himself. Impulsive, headstrong, foolhardy, yes, yes, and yes. But not hesitant. It was one more thing Steve had taken from him. 

Natasha moved instead, leaning forward just a little, until she was closer than a breath, the heat of her skin palpable, barely an inch away. That, he still had strength for, and made himself move (fall, more accurately) to brush her cheek with his, letting their scents mingle just a bit. Enough to say, “I know you. I let you get close.” A moment later he felt Bruce and Clint on either side, and Natasha moved enough for them to take her place briefly. _I know you. And you._ His pack. _His_. Thor touched his shoulder enough to get Tony to look at him, and then pressed their foreheads together in his Asgardian greeting, foreign and unique and fitting and also pretty practical for a guy Tony would otherwise have to climb like a tree to greet properly. He felt the tiniest ghost of a grin tug at his lips at the thought as they pulled away.

Steve moaned softly in raw pain that had little to do with his broken body, and thank fuck he had the others around him because Tony turned towards him so fast, had his hands out to reach for him, that he might have touched Steve before Natasha and Thor made an impenetrable barrier of their bodies.

“Please,” Steve said, voice ragged and blurred through a broken nose, cracked jaw, and missing teeth. “I’m- sorry.”

Tony opened his mouth and then physically shut it with his hand before Natasha could do the same for him. _Goddamn._ Fury had even warned him and Steve’s voice had taken him by surprise, even though he hadn’t made an actual command. Natasha closed her eyes and shook her head before nodding at the door. 

Without a backwards look, the Avengers left Steve behind, huddling in pain as medical staff swarmed through, his bloody body disappearing behind white-clad orderlies.

\--

Fury waited until everyone had followed him back to his office, waited until everyone had sat down, waited until the silence had stretched to a nearly unbearable length before making a call.

“Report.” Several moments of quiet mumbling from the other line. “Understood.” The phone clicked back in its cradle (SHIELD still had phones with cradles, such a tragedy, Tony’s brain commented inanely) and Fury leaned forward.

“Rogers will live. He’ll need approximately three weeks of recovery, but he will live, and he’s expected to heal cleanly.”

“Yeah, he does that,” Natasha said, her mouth hard.

“You have options when he comes out of Medical.”

There were several long and tense moments of silence before Natasha spoke. “We need him to fight.”

Clint’s breath exploded out of him, like he’d wanted to say the same thing and had been holding back. Thor scowled but nodded, and even Bruce was nodding sadly. Tony nearly couldn’t believe his eyes and ears. Nearly. Because Natasha could be ruthless, but she wasn’t entirely stone cold. Not with them. If anyone had been feeling Steve was completely beyond hope, Tony didn’t think they would have hesitated to kill. They still had some tiny hope they could extract something useful out of him. Something to make him pay for the rest of his long life.

“Steve is a good fighter,” Natasha said flatly. “He’s one of the only people with the strength, reflexes, and experience to fight the kinds we have to fight. He… also knows how to work alongside us.”

Bare facts. True facts. Steve’s abilities were needed. If SHIELD had been willing to take a chance on the Hulk, than in the overall scheme of things one semi-stable alpha super-soldier was a minimal risk compared to saving the world.

Tony knew that, and also knew if the Avengers didn’t take him back, SHIELD would use him in some other way, on some other mission. He might never have to see him again.

But then he’d never know where Steve would be. Never know if he’d turn up where the Avengers ended up having to go, or if they might have to call him for backup. Tony wouldn’t be exposed to him constantly, wouldn’t have to worry that the wrong word at the wrong time could send him spinning out of control, but would also never get used to him. If Steve stayed, he’d be an obstacle Tony could learn to overcome. If he left, he could become an unexpected landmine, blowing into Tony’s life at unexpected intervals.

_Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t._

Either option left him with a gut-deep fear that just made him want to lock himself in his workshop, inside his armor, until somehow they’d discovered a way to turn him back to normal.

And that was about as likely as pigs building their own versions of Iron Man suits and detonating shit-bombs over Manhattan.

“True,” Fury said, his face and voice very neutral. “But there will be difficulties either way. You have three weeks. Consider all possible options and obstacles. His fate is in your control.” He met each person’s eyes in turn as he spoke, and got a nod of assent, quick or slow or reluctant, for each one. 

“We can’t trust him. If he stays, goes, or gets locked up, we still can’t trust him,” Clint said, hard anger in his voice. He cracked his bloody knuckles aggressively, but somewhere under that anger was some of the same fear Tony was feeling. And for the same reasons. Shit, what had been done to him could be done to _Clint_ , who’d already had a very nasty bout with losing personal control, Tony realized.

“No, we can’t. Not without safeguards in place.” Natasha was tapping her fingers against her opposite elbow, eyes locked on some middle distance as she thought.

“Rogers will be locked in high-security medical with full, twenty-four-seven monitoring until you’ve made your decisions. Stark, I’m just going to assume your AI has hacked it to make it easier on my tech’s egos. Go home. All of you, figure out what you want to do. As of now you’re on Level Seven priority alert for the foreseeable future.”

Which meant SHIELD was going to spare calling them for anything short of another alien invasion. He was giving them as much time and space as possible in the only way he could.

_Thanks, Nick._

\--  
The ride back to the Tower was quiet, everyone wrapped in their own thoughts. But they were hardly separate, reaching out almost unconsciously to one another, to touch a shoulder, nudge a knee against a knee, little fitful bursts of contact like neurons sending impulses to form a thought. This was, Tony realized for the first time, how it must be like in the Quinjet post-mission, when he usually flew home under his own steam. This was what he’d been missing, these quiet little affirmations of connection. This was what he’d been afraid of.

He didn’t have to be. He never should have been. They gave him a measure of stability he desperately needed. He didn’t exactly go clinging to Thor or Natasha like a limpet or anything, just sort of basked in the warmth of trust for a few precious minutes. Because that, unfortunately, was all he had to spare.

Bruce caught Tony’s attention as they landed, and turned his phone to face him, showing a text message. “Betty has results,” he said. 

“Time to face the music,” Tony said, heaving himself to his feet. Natasha flicked an inquiring eyebrow at him, and Tony shook his head. Let him figure things out himself first before broadcasting everything to the whole pack.

Bruce politely swerved off and let Tony enter the lab alone. The walk from the door to Betty’s station seemed to be a million miles away, the floor trying to swallow him up at he focused on her dark hair and white lab coat, making everything finally come together.

“Betty?” he managed after the second try.

She looked up, took a deep breath, and plunged right into the heart of the matter.

“Tony, I checked your samples myself, and I also sent the pictures to a friend of mine who works more directly with dynamic expression differences at the cellular level.” Betty paused there, but didn’t really need to go any further, not with the dolorous expression on her expressive face.

“I’m too far gone for gene therapy.” Tony said it for her. He hadn’t been expecting a miracle, not when he’d gone into full-blown heat after less than two days, not when Rogers’ hormones were so potent they’d changed his body so fast.

She nodded, her shoulders slumping. “It’s even more than that. Your cells are very, very omega, and your hormone levels are extremely high right now. I… honestly I’d expect you to have another round of heat within the next few days.”

“Oh for fuck’s sake!” Tony exploded, nearly ready to punch something. Betty didn’t even flinch, but then again her boyfriend held all records on angry outbursts. “I just got _through_ with heat.”

Betty waited patiently as Tony took a couple deep breaths. He wasn’t angry at _her_ , and they both knew it. “When you’re about to start, Bruce and I can take blood samples as you go fully into heat and see what we can do to alleviate your symptoms as much as possible. Full-on suppressants will probably be out because you’re going to have a certain amount of hormonal flux, but I’m confident we can get you to functional in a fairly short timeframe.”

Tony bit down on the desire to say something scathing and sarcastic, bit down and chewed it and swallowed it until it landed right below the arc reactor, because “functional” had saved his life in the past, and “functional” was going to keep him from being a desperate cock addict two days after he’d managed to pry himself away Steve.

“I’m sorry I don’t have better news,” she said.

Tony waved her apology away sharply. It wasn’t going to make anything better. She smiled sadly at him, not in sympathy, but in empathy. She was in his pack. She understood. She was dating _Bruce Banner_ , for the love of love, and if anyone could understand about involuntary transformation, even without being directly involved, she could.

He managed to soften his expression enough for an apology, and left for the comfort of his workshop. Rhodey was due in a couple of hours, and he wanted to get his head on straight enough to handle what Rhodes was definitely not going to take well. He pulled up the most sensitive and exacting part of Iron Man’s wiring on the holographic interface, and tried to lose himself, however briefly, in the precise tangles of electricity that made him a superhero.

\--

Rhodey was on his feet, his hands clenching and unclenching into fists, nostrils flared, eyes narrowed, the only reason he wasn’t stalking out of the room directly towards Steve was because he didn’t know where he was right now. As Tony had predicted, Rhodey had reacted to Tony’s spare explanation and new scent very badly.

“Where is he?” he growled, and _damn_ , Tony had never noticed Rhodey's scent so much before this. He felt the pull towards him and kept himself sitting down and as calm as he could get. Granted, that wasn’t very much with what all had been going on today.

Tony really hadn’t wanted to lead with that story, but it was impossible to hide his new scent and Rhodey was (rightly) worried whenever Tony voluntarily invited him over. Maybe it was better to just get all of it out of the way as fast as possible; dreading it always made it worse. He’d proven that conclusively with trying to hide his palladium poisoning.

“SHIELD HQ- Rhodey, hang on!” Tony said, raising his voice as Rhodey abruptly turned towards the door. 

“Why? Give me one damn reason why, Tony, because I have a few million years of evolution, over ten years military training, and nearly twenty years of being your friend all telling me to go over there and shove his teeth down his throat. He can’t _do_ that. Crazy people do that. Not even _animals_ do that.”

“Avengers already served pack justice on him with Fury’s blessing. He’s locked up in max-security medical until he’s mobile again. It was about as brutal as my cruel little heart could have wanted,” Tony said, knowing the smile of satisfaction he was trying to sport was thin and brittle. 

“Can I see it?”

“JARVIS, roll tape,” Tony said, leaning forward and letting his head hand, shutting his eyes and trying to shut his ears to the sounds of the rather epic beatdown Steve had suffered a few hours before. Rhodey watched in silence, a faint territorial growl audible as Steve finally knelt, his apology spilling out like the blood dripping from his body. As the tape ended, Rhodey finally sat down, his blood up and his scent high, but his own sense of justice and alpha instincts assuaged that the focus of his anger had received some punishment. Tony forced himself to sit back as Rhodey leaned forward, not wanting to do anything inappropriate. You know, like rub Rhodey’s legs and purr, because even though he wasn’t Steve, he was still an unbonded alpha and one of Tony’s oldest friends.

“Rhodey, can you tone it down a little?” Tony asked, his voice coming out a little strangled. Rhodey stared at him for a moment without comprehension, then abruptly swore and took several deep breaths. With each deliberate exhalation, the pull diminished, became less pervasive, until Rhodey was no longer broadcasting alpha anger across half the floor.

“What do you need from me?” he asked, once Tony’s color had gone back to normal and he was no longer edging away and trying to crowd closer at the same time. “Tell me.”

“Oh honeybear, the last time you said something like that you swore you’d never forgive me, and then swore you’d never touch tequila again.” This time Tony managed a more genuine smile, and it startled Rhodey into laughter.

“I swear you…” he trailed off. “Fate hates you. What did you do to piss her off?”

“Born under the right stars, apparently.” Tony’s smile faded and he really, really wished he had some tequila right now. Or bourbon. Or scotch. Hell, even a beer would do. “If I gotta take a leave of absence, will you cover my shift if the world starts ending?”

“Like you had to ask. The Air Force doesn’t let me use the suit as much as I want, but if SHIELD sub-contracts me, I get extra flight time.”

“How dare they deprive you, the bastards.” 

“Red tape.”

“You see, that’s why I don’t work for the government anymore.”

“Technically you still do. Even if you did make them grovel,” Pepper said from the doorway. Both men turned to see Pepper hanging onto the doorframe, her cheeks very faint damp, her eyes very slightly red.

“Miss Potts has been here for the majority of your conversation with Colonel Rhodes,” JARVIS announced belatedly. Tony flicked his eyes up at one of JARVIS’ sensors in annoyance. And a little relief. One less explanation to have to give.

“I caught an early flight home,” Pepper said, and stepped into the room, her heels seeming very loud as she crossed the floor and sat next to Tony on the couch, their hip and knee touching. She felt good to him as she always had, and he folded an arm around her in their more recent way of allowable PDA. It made him feel strong to feel her thinner frame against his, and he hadn’t felt very strong all day.

“SHIELD and the Avengers have this under control. They have _him_ under control,” Tony pointed out, not wanting to have to keep Pepper from running right into Steve’s hospital room to give him a piece of her mind. He didn’t want Pepper anywhere _near_ Steve, ever.

“They do _now_ ,” she said acidly, and accurately. 

“Yeah, now,” he agreed. No point in saying he hadn’t noticed Steve getting possessive before last week because no one had noticed. Not Natasha, not Clint, not Fury, not anyone. “But we need another body in the field. They’re going to use him when he heals up.” He took a steady breath before saying something he almost never did. “Help me. He’s gonna be out there, and even if he was kicked out of the pack he’s still…” Tony tapped his forehead nearly hard enough to bruise himself, indicating that damned bond Steve had forced on him. “I won’t quit-.”

“You won’t stop,” Pepper finished. “I never thought you would. I gave up on stopping you a while back, Tony.”

“I gave up shortly after I met you,” Rhodey said.

“We’ll figure out something. We will,” Pepper promised, leaning her head against him. Tony turned towards her and moved them together into a kiss, enjoying her light, gentle touch along with their quiet confidence together. Well over ten years together, as co-workers, as friends, as long-term packmates, had given them a foundation that couldn’t be knocked askew, not even by something like this. He pulled away from Pepper as he abruptly felt the heat from Rhodey’s body as he moved in.

He found his head in Rhodey’s hands, Rhodey’s eyes still those of a friend, but a little darker with concern, with compassion, with that inborn alpha drive to protect which in Rhodey was still working like it should. He was still all right. Rhodey was still good. Tony leaned into him, falling into a kiss as easily as he had with Pepper, despite the fact he’d maybe kissed Rhodey twice, the first purely on a lark, the second in desperation after he’d been rescued from the Ten Rings. Now it was as natural as breathing, and Tony let himself have that, have him, have her, in long moments of quiet, companionable silence and intimacy.

“I have an idea,” Pepper said in Tony’s ear as he pulled away from both of them. “I do.”

“You thought of an idea while kissing? I love you,” Tony said fervently.

“Tell us,” Rhodey said, and both men smiled grimly as she laid out her plan.

\--

“Silence him,” Pepper said to the rest of the Avengers the next day, her hand on Tony’s arm. “Tony’ll be armored up in the field, and usually moving too fast to worry about having to look at Steve, but it’s his voice that has the potential to trip him up the most, right? So silence him.”

“He’s not going to take a vow-,” Clint began.

“Wire his jaw shut and put something like that mask you used on Loki over his mouth. If he needs to subvocalize something vital, JARVIS can translate, right? Make it so he physically can’t even try to talk. Take away the temptation,” she said flatly.

Make him go cold-turkey-Tony. He appreciated the fuck out of the irony. He also appreciated the fuck out of Pepper. And was impressed by her. Hell, even Natasha was impressed by her.

“That’s… a definite possibility,” Natasha said, eyes widening. “Tony?”

A bare handful of words, not even commands, had nearly had Tony on his knees before Steve when he’d still been furious at him. An actual command? Tony wasn’t sure he had it in him to resist. Well, he thought he did, but considering he’d been warned and still nearly went down during Steve’s apology, he probably didn’t, not yet.

The others were looking at each other, Bruce mildly appalled but nodding, Clint in grim agreement, and Thor, faintly nauseous, bowing his head in acquiescence. Tony didn’t need any grand insight to recognize comparing Steve to Loki probably hadn’t gone down very well. Or maybe Asgard had punished Loki the same way.

“That might do for a start,” Tony said finally.

“We need to work out a few details… I want to have a few last words with him, though. Then we’ll let the doctors at him.”

\--

Steve was lying facing the wall, heavy shackles holding him to the bed. Natasha walked in without knocking and sat down by the side of his bed, and he didn’t even twitch. Tony and the others watched avidly on the video feed, courtesy of JARVIS.

“They’re going to silence you,” she said abruptly. Steve didn’t turn towards her, but closed his eyes. “They’re going to wire your jaw shut and put a mask over your mouth. If you try to take it off or destroy it, it will beep an alert to all of us. If you have battle-critical information, JARVIS will be monitoring and will relay anything you sub-vocalize.”

He turned over, eyes wild with something a little like hope. “You’re not…?”

“We don’t trust you out of our sight.”

That hope flared and died in Steve’s eyes, and Tony felt sick inside.

“You’ll fight, and you’ll live at the Tower, but locked on your floor with constant monitoring. House arrest. No public appearances. You are never going to be alone again.”

That phrase, usually meant to be a comfort, particularly for a man who’d lost everyone he’d ever known or cared about, now seemed to fill Steve with dread.

“Why?” Natasha asked, an alpha’s command in her tone. “Name of God, Steve, why did you do that to Tony?”

“I couldn’t… I was afraid… I couldn’t lose him,” Steve whispered, tearing his eyes away to stare at the wall again. “I couldn’t feel him during the battles, and I was afraid I’d never be able to protect him unless I knew where he was. What if I sent him into something too dangerous? What if I sent you to help him when he didn’t need it and we let someone get through the cracks?”

“You don’t rape someone omega for a _battle strategy_ ,” Natasha snarled, looming over him in the bed. Steve kept staring at the wall, eyes closed, a tear leaking out. “It was more than that, wasn’t it?”

Steve didn’t answer, but two more tears sprang free despite his attempts at keeping his eyes shut.

“You wanted him, didn’t you?”

Steve’s breath rushed out of him like he’d been sucker-punched. 

Natasha’s voice unexpectedly softened. “He’s beautiful, and I don’t blame you for wanting him. A lot of people wanted him all his life, and here he was, suddenly willing to share pack time, to form a bond with you. It must have felt like Christmas had come early, didn’t it? Did you already have this planned out or did you just see him naked and happy with you and want that forever?”

Steve didn’t answer, but his face crumpled. There were IVs running into his arm, but Tony knew they only contained saline – Steve was too resistant to drugs to have painkillers work on him, so the pain of his healing flesh and bones had to be wearing him down. Now might be the only time when he’d be vulnerable enough to admit anything, and he was in a little awe of Natasha’s timing.

“You weren’t thinking,” Natasha stated, answering her own question from the expression on Steve’s face. “You saw an opportunity for that bond and you weren’t willing to wait. You were _afraid_. You were terrified if you let him go once, you’d never have another chance. And you’ve already lost too much by hesitating.”

Steve didn’t move, tears running fast down his face, shoulders shaking with repressed emotion.

“Now you’ve lost everything else by moving too fast. I had a second chance, which was more than I deserved. You had yours already, when SHIELD thawed you out. We don’t get a third chance. We’re too powerful for that.”

He turned towards her, eyes opening a slit, brilliant blue through his tears.

“The surgeons are on their way. Any last words?”

“I’m sorry,” he whispered.

Natasha leaned forward and kissed him on his forehead like a mother would to a child. “I know you are.” The door opened behind her and the surgical team rolled a cart in, all of them scrubbed, masked, and gowned already. “But that’s not good enough.” 

She moved with the speed of a striking snake, straddling him and holding his head and chest down until the orderlies could strap him into complete immobility. Then the surgeons approached, the scalpels shining in their hands, blocking the sight of Steve from the room’s cameras.

Then the screaming began.

Tony watched every second of it, hand over the arc reactor to rub away a sympathy ache. There was nothing to see save the doctors’ backs and the occasional spurt of blood, the changing of red-soaked dressings for fresh white ones, bits of wire and mountings being passed back and forth. Long hours later, someone put their hands out for the elaborate mouth cover that had been sitting on the cart, white and utilitarian, little effort spared to make it look integrated into Steve’s costume. Minutes later the circle of doctors and nurses broke, taking with them mounds of blood-stained sheets and dressings. In the bed, Steve was pale and staring fixedly at the wall, the faint red scars from where the wire had been inserted and pulled already looking days old instead of mere minutes. The white gag covered his mouth entirely, rendering him mute. 

Natasha waited until the doctors had left before going around to the side of the bed again and removing the most restrictive of the restraints, giving him the freedom to at least move his head again. Steve didn’t even twitch.

“Don’t you dare think you can sit in here and mope, either,” she said casually.

Steve turned to look at her, and there was a returning glimmer of anger in his face. 

“Don’t even think about challenging me,” she said, staring him down. “You reserve all that anger for anyone else who figures out what happened to Tony. Because someone will eventually, and you know what they do to omegas who get captured.”

Steve nodded slowly, wincing when that pulled at his new wounds, and a muffled animal sound came from behind the gag. 

“Just do your _job_ , Rogers,” she said, and turned and walked away, the door slamming behind her. Steve stared at the door for several heartbeats before howling through his gag, the sound distorting his screams as his face crumpled and he thumped his restrained fists on the bed. His entire body was wracked with sobs as he pulled against the restraints, the horrible sound echoing around the room as the reality of what he’d done truly seemed to hit home.


	3. Chapter 3

Sometimes watching someone else get kicked in the head could be a cathartic experience. At the least, it let Tony walk away from the video screen feeling like some of the world had finally stabilized underneath his feet. Steve’s voice was no longer a threat, his presence in the Tower, when he returned, would contained, compartmentalized, watched and guarded. There were walls up again between him and Steve, physical and a little bit of otherwise, walls that could let Tony be who he had been with the confidence that he otherwise knew would have lacked. And he would have time to find those walls again, and the confidence to build them. 

He was sure it had taken a lot of self-discipline on the others’ parts, but they had been remarkably normal about not trying to hover over him, and the last day and a half had been remarkably normal, at least for him. Pepper had readjusted her schedule to be able to spend more time in the Tower, but was trying to make up for having to have bailed on her Hong Kong meetings. Rhodey had gotten a mission, much to his disgust at the timing, but left Tony with a carte blanche to call him if Avenging was needed. Seeing Steve in a nervous breakdown had apparently helped calm Rhodey’s need for personal revenge. Seeing Steve in a nervous breakdown had helped _everyone_ calm their need for personal revenge. 

Maybe Steve _having_ a nervous breakdown would help him see why the hell he’d done what he did. Miracles could happen.

And honestly, Tony just wanted a couple of normal days to himself after everything that had happened. That wasn’t too much to ask for, world, was it?

Tony wiped at his forehead again, the scrap of towel already soaked as he tinkered with some minor damage to one of his helmets. He’d been welding, and wearing protective leathers, and was sweating like a hog in the resultant warmth, concentrating too fiercely on the precise connections to bother about much of anything else. 

“JARVIS, lower the temp to sixty-eight Fahrenheit,” he said idly, checking the weld seam once more before hunting for a file to smooth it. Dummy helpfully tried to move the right one closer, and handed him a socket wrench instead. Tony waved him away, and the hammer he tried to hand him next, before finding the file himself under an open bag of pistachios.

“Sir, that is the current temperature,” JARVIS replied crisply. “If I may interrupt your creative frenzy, I would like to point out my sensors indicate a rise in your internal temperature as well as an increase in your pheromonal output.”

“ _Damn,_ ” Tony said fervently, and nearly dropped the helmet on his foot in his haste to get out of his lab and into Banner’s immediately if not sooner. It had been the promised two days, but Tony had been _really_ hoping to eke a little more time out of his grace period.

“Yes, sir, these signs are compatible with an immanent heat cycle.”

“No shit. Alert-.”

“Doctors Banner and Ross are aware and ready for your arrival,” JARVIS interrupted.

Tony sped down one floor, the usual short trip seeming to take forever. What had happened that a usual fun trip over to Bruce’s domain had turned into a hell-for-leather dash to save what little was left of Tony’s dignity and sanity? He knew he was probably minutes away from going stupidly incoherent with sexual need and in front of two genius scientists that he very much respected, just on the off chance they could get him to Betty’s promised “functional.”

He really, really, really hoped to God this worked.

Bruce and Betty looked up as Tony practically flew in the door, the normal security protocols for Bruce’s lab relaxed purely for Tony’s arrival. Bruce waved him in to sit down on a stool next to Betty’s work station, a blood pressure cuff, syringes, and sample tubes lined up on a tray next to him.

“We’re ready,” Bruce said simply. 

“Lifesavers, both of you,” Tony said, with an attempt at a cheerful wave. He sat down, barely getting himself settled when his heat hit him like a lightning bolt.

Bruce looked up sharply as Tony’s stomach sank, a hollow ache suddenly beginning to build in the center of him. His pheromones rose in a cloud, his skin dampening, slick beginning to mark his thighs as his ass began to quiver, eager and desperate for an alpha’s come and knot. The overwhelming need wasn’t fully on him yet, but it was there and growing fast, along with the too-hot feeling that only an alpha’s touch could quench. It was nearly as bad as the last time Steve had had him in his control.

“Take the samples,” Tony said, concentrating hard to make sure the words came out in a sensible order. “Bruce, now!”

Bruce moved fast, cuffing Tony’s arm and raising the vein in his elbow with practiced ease. Within a few moments, he was drawing blood and passing it to Betty with a look of fierce concentration. She dropped in testing solutions and began to feed the samples into her machines one after the other as Tony clung to reason and sanity with all his might. They had to know his hormone levels before they had any chance of finding a halfway decent counter-dose, or at least taking the edge off. If they knew that, they could give him something to simulate the appropriate amount of chemicals that alpha semen produced in his blood, enough to fool his body that the point of heat had been achieved.

Supposedly it wasn’t nearly as satisfying, but at least it wouldn’t require him to kneel and present himself for Steve fucking Rogers. _(He wanted to, everything in him screamed at him to find his alpha and let himself be taken care of, be **taken** , fucked, knotted, bred, overwhelmed and sated…)_ Tony gritted his teeth and fought against his rebellious body with all the legendary stubbornness he possessed. Steve was not here, and as long as Tony didn’t see him, hear him, scent him, or think about him too hard, he thought he could at least maintain some façade of control.

Another wave of fresh desire wracked Tony’s body, and Bruce grabbed more samples as Tony felt a waterfall of wetness slicking his thighs. His knees felt weak, trembling, and every little rub of his thighs against each other caused little sparks Tony was desperately trying to keep from turning into an inferno. He needed to spread his legs, bare his throat, and Tony gripped the edges of the stool to keep himself from doing either. Bruce had to pause after the second round of samples to spritz something on the front of a paper surgeon’s mask and slap it over his face, then repeating the procedure and slipping one over Tony’s head before bending over his arm again. Once the mask settled into place, Tony could no longer smell himself, and blinked bemusedly at the bottle on the counter with eyes that were having trouble focusing.

“Industrial-strength pheromone damper,” Bruce said simply, and passed over a third set of samples to Betty. Betty paused in her experimental procedure to douse a mask for herself, blotting her brow as she continued to work. 

Tony’s pants were clinging to his legs like he’d wet himself, his nipples were erect and felt like they were chafing at the front of his shirt, and his penis was half-hard and getting harder by the moment. He’d _had_ to spread his legs to keep from trying to squeeze his ass together in a desperate attempt at relief, and knew he was losing the fight to stay coherent.

“How much longer?” he managed, head thrown back as another rush of slick drenched his thighs, nearly dripping on the floor. God, he needed something inside him so badly it hurt, and needed it _now_.

“Bruce…” Betty’s voice was hesitant behind her mask, and Bruce joined her in looking over the three print-outs. It was all Tony could do not to drop to his knees and tear his clothes away so he could shove his fingers in his ass to get some relief. 

“Tony,” Bruce said after a long moment, loud and firm enough to be heard over Tony’s panting. “Your hormones are spiking at Rogers’ level. There isn’t a standard substitute we have that could counteract them fully. The best we could do would be to take the edge off; get you closer to normal ranges.” He held up a syringe with sympathy in his eyes. “But there’s something else.”

“Shot first, can’t think,” Tony managed, trying to keep from wriggling on the stool for any hint of friction. _“Please!”_ His control was hanging by the thinnest of threads, and he couldn’t stand this much longer. He honestly didn’t care if Bruce penetrated him with a needle or his cock, he just needed relief.

Bruce shot him up immediately, the soothing effect of alpha hormones quelling the razor-sharp edge of desire that had blocked nearly all thought. His thighs were still soaked and getting wetter, his cock still hard, his desire to be knotted still there, but it felt like he could still string a thought or two together. The hollow ache was worse than ever, however, and Tony could feel his ass nearly burn with the need to be filled.

“Tony, you were made omega, and made fast and hard.”

Tony _needed_ it fast and hard. He leaned forward, and nearly cried out as the cooler air caressed his slick opening. Bruce tapped Tony’s mask, and he managed to refocus his fractured attention.

“Your hormones are in flux, and because of who changed you, they’re nearly five times more powerful than a regular made omega. The shots we gave you will help, but even with the most powerful market suppressants, you’ll still go into heat.” Bruce paused, looking grim, and Betty said the last of the bad news. “And it will take at least a year for your hormones to stabilize and for you to start having a regular cycle. Until then, your heats will be very powerful and highly frequent. And unpredictable.”

Tony knew that, he remembered what Bruce, and Betty, and Fury had said, but the repetition helped a hell of a lot with the state he was in right now.

“T-toys?” Tony managed.

Betty shook her head. “They’d help in the early stages, but made omegas tend to be very sensitive. Most of them had reported toys actually exacerbated their heats.”

Tony’s heart sank even as his hips moved almost mindlessly, seeking relief. He tried to stop himself, but couldn’t muster up the strength. He couldn’t control his body, but at least for right now he still had some control over his mind. “I. Don’t. Want. Steve,” he said very precisely, the hatred on his face at odds with the nigh-visible clouds of heat pheromones coming off of him. The aching, empty throb inside him contradicted his brave words – he was primed for Steve’s cock, Steve’s come, and knew that his only real chance for fast relief would come from letting Steve knot him.

_No!_

Bruce looked down at the papers in his hands, then back up again, showing nearly as much anger as Tony, tempered by sympathy. “We already used the standard hormone shots to bring your levels down to near-normal. Tony, I know it doesn’t feel like it, but it is possible to endure through heat without an alpha. It will take time, and more hormone shots, and possibly some physical simulation of a knot to fool your body into thinking a mating has taken place, but you absolutely _do not require an alpha_.”

“How long?” Tony ground out.

“A week, give or take a few days,” Bruce said flatly.

Tony didn’t scream at the result; he knew Bruce and Betty too well to think they’d left any stone unturned, at least for what they could do to help him within the span of a few days. He’d be losing so much time, probably months of it over the course of the next year, and then weeks more for the rest of his life. Steve had taken that time from him, because when he was like this, writhing and desperate, he was not Tony. He wasn’t himself. Steve had effectively taken _years_ off his life.

“And if… another alpha?” Tony asked, squeezing his eyes shut as he tried to clench on the slack, open feeling of his ass. Regardless of Betty’s warning, Tony was about a minute away from telling her to raid his toy chest for a plug, just to get another modicum of relief. Thought was slipping away again.

“Combined with the shots, maybe three days,” Bruce said.

Tony bit down on his lip hard enough to draw blood as he fought a coherent sentence past the demands of his body.

“I could-.”

“There’s an alternative,” Bruce interrupted him before he could make any firm decisions. He shot a look over at Betty, who hesitated, and finally nodded. Bruce reached into his pocket and pulled out what looked like an epi-pen. “This is what I’ve been using ever since I joined the Avengers. When Betty came back… I couldn’t live my life under the kind of strict control I’d been using anymore. But I had to make sure I had a way to get through heat fast if… something came up. This is a specialized alpha hormone cocktail, the most potent one available. It’s never failed me.”

“Made from Steve’s blood,” Tony ground out. Had to be. Steve had vaguely mentioned something about helping Bruce out from time to time, but Tony had chalked that up to Bruce’s never-ending work on what had gone wrong with the experiment that had changed him. And that had been going on so long, and was such a sore subject, that Bruce rarely went into detail and Tony rarely pried. Bruce nodded, and Tony cursed.

“He was my pack leader, and he helped me develop this,” Bruce said, tight-lipped and apologetic. Betrayal sat well with no one, but each of the Avengers had particular reasons for breaking trust to hit home hard. For whatever Steve had done for them in the past, no matter how genuinely helpful and altruistic it had been at the time, it all seemed tainted now. “It would work for you; get you back to normal within a day or two.”

If Tony were willing to let more of Steve’s bodily fluids pollute his system, sure. Every shot would help quell his heat, but would also continue Steve’s claim on him. Forever. Even if only in the most peripheral way.

But if the choice were struggling through a week of mind-numbing lust while desperately trying to get himself off, or three days of shots and trying to find someone to knot him, or dealing with it for a day or two… Well, Tony knew which one he’d rather pick. He’d put worse things into his body for far stupider reasons, and to stop feeling like he needed Bruce to restrain him from crawling out the door to find Steve and spread himself to be mounted, he’d do nearly anything.

They’d kept Steve alive for more reasons than his position as a fighter of super-human menaces. Let him keep providing the means for Tony to resist him. Hell, let him know his hormones were being shot into Tony through the medium of a needle rather than his cock, for the sole reason of making sure Tony never needed to beg for Steve’s attention again.

“Do it,” Tony demanded, before he could abandon to stool to start writhing on the floor.

Bruce handed the injector over to Betty without another word. Betty put her hand on the back of Tony’s neck and made a rumbling, soothing noise as she injected the dose, tightening her hand at the same time in a broad, gentle pinch. Within seconds, the hormone cocktail was doing its job, chasing away the uncontrollable desire, but even before then Tony felt himself relaxing, nearly going limp at her touch.

The too-sensitive feeling started to fade, the chafing stopping, his clothes no longer a torment. The heated throb of his genitals downshifted abruptly, making him feel the wetness of his pants clinging to him as annoying, rather than another form of stimulation. He still felt vaguely horny, but more in the sense that he’d really like to retreat to his room to rub one out, rather than needing to tackle the nearest warm body (preferably an alpha) and be fucked into oblivion. 

Five minutes later, after Betty had taken another blood sample and was humming something cheerful as she processed the results, Tony realized why he’d gotten so calm, so fast. It hadn’t just been because his lust levels had gone down, it had been her hand on the back of his neck.

“Did… did you just scruff me?” Tony asked incredulously, bringing a hand up to rub the back of his neck in wonder.

Betty’s lips twitched. “I thought it would help.”

Tony chuckled in disbelief. “I think the last time somebody scruffed me I was four years old. You’re good, sister.” Usually only parents or pack-bonded guardians could scruff their children, but sometimes another trusted friend could successfully pull off the archaic calming move as well. Something else occurred to him just that second, the reason Betty would be so skilled at scruffing, and he broke into a grin that made Bruce put his head in his hands, confirming Tony’s idea before he’d even spoken. “Oh my God, you’ve scruffed the Hulk!”

Betty tried to hide a grin, but failed. “That helps too.”

“JARVIS, next time that happens, I want pictures for my very, very, very private collection.”

“Over my raging green alter-ego,” Bruce muttered.

“It would have to be, wouldn’t it, dear?” Betty said innocently, and Bruce sighed in defeat.

Tony was grinning for more reasons than just the thought of the strongest guy on the planet being taken down by Betty’s motherly scruffing. He was talking with his friends, bantering with them. Laughing with them. _Thinking_ with him. He could think again, and about something other than sex or Steve. He could snark, he could compare notes, he could _be himself._

“Tony, go sluice off,” Bruce recommended. Tony grimaced as he stood – he was fucking mess, and his clothes were as good as trash. Betty grabbed a fresh printout from the tray and nodded, holding up a restraining hand before he could leave. 

“Your levels are back in the green. The good green,” she amended, Bruce’s shoulders shaking with silent laughter as he bent over his microscope. “Take a couple days to make sure everything is working as it should. You might have some ups and downs, so just be prepared for that. If JARVIS would be so kind as to monitor your pheromone output for us-.”

“Of course, Dr. Ross.”

“Then we only need blood samples every twelve hours.”

Tony let out a long slow breath, not quite sighing in relief. This was the most normal he’d felt since Steve had stuck his cock into him, and might be the most normal he’d feel for a long time. 

Well, he could angst about it later. Now he just had to figure out how to deal with what was in front of him before he paraded his partially in-heat ass around the Tower.

\--

He thought he could handle it.

He really hated being wrong.

Thinking he could just retreat to his room, whack off, and then go about his day had been, to say the least, wildly optimistic. At least he was not, thank you Bruce and Betty, walking around with a dripping ass. But there was a solidly distracting urge to be filled, or at least get off, and Tony was having trouble keeping his hands to himself. He was different now, and if he went and tried to just do his usual thing…

Well, that could end up in a really unfunny repetition of that one time he’d gotten spectacularly smashed, tied up, and then teased by a couple of very patient and cruel ladies until he thought his balls were going to explode. Crawling the walls of his bedroom or having to call Bruce again did not appeal. Yeah, the feeling would probably fade after a while, but it would take longer if he did nothing about it. He didn’t want to have to drug himself to the gills, and he wasn’t yet so sex-stupid that he couldn’t think.

Pinching the bridge of his nose briefly, Tony sighed and went to look through the reading material he’d stocked up on two days ago.

Thirty minutes of that and he shoved them aside. He just wanted this to stop, seriously, and couldn’t fucking concentrate on what he was supposed to do. Sex became sorta not-fun when it turned from “want” to “need.” He just needed… He needed advice. 

Luckily he had that on speed dial.

“JARVIS, call Natasha.”

There was a faint click. “Stark?”

“Said you had some tips?” he asked, managing to keep his frayed irritation out of his voice.

“If you want them, I have them.”

“I need them.”

There was no hesitation or question in her answer. “I’ll be up.”

Another click, and she was gone. Tony stared at the wall for a long moment, the distracting slow throb of his body giving him no relief. The idea that she was coming didn’t really disturb him, no matter that she was his pack alpha now, no matter what had happened to him. He prodded at himself mentally, wondering if he was supposed to be more disturbed than this. Sex had been used as a weapon against him, and here he was soliciting a practical demo.

Maybe it was better to have this happen now before the nightmares started. At least he could learn a thing or two before he would have to have JARVIS start turning on the white noise generators to keep the rest of the pack from hearing him relive things he wished he could forget.

Not that he could. He touched the hard circle of the arc reactor and the slight swell of his stomach, and let a searing bolt of anger clear his head.

“I heard you had some success.”

Tony looked up to see Natasha at his bedroom door, just outside the threshold. 

“News travels fast.”

“You were broadcasting pheromones. Now you’re not as much. There was a trip to Banner’s lab in between. I don’t need JARVIS to put that together.” She sniffed very delicately. “Whatever he did, that worked pretty well.”

Tony had been standing, pacing, trying to walk off the remains of his hormone storm, using every technique he’d ever had to kill boners, all with fairly limited success. Those “ups and downs” Betty had talked about weren’t exactly little ripples in the pond, no matter how much he would have wished for them. He was going to have to take matters into his own hands, literally, very soon.

“Not as well as I’d hoped.”

She gave an odd, expansive shrug. “Easier to just work through it sometimes. That’s how I coped.” She paused. “I can show you, if you want.”

Tony raised an eyebrow at her comment, and Natasha nodded at the books and pamphlets he had unsuccessfully hidden under a tablet on his bedside table. _A New You. My Internal Omega. Omegahood – A Couple’s Guide. Becoming the Womb. Amazing Omega Sex – Ten Tricks to Drive Him Wild! Sex Slave (Becoming Omega and Loving It). Filled Forever, a Step-by-Step Guide Through Becoming Omega._

Well, whatever. He had to figure things out somehow, and there were a few good pointers amongst the romantic garbage that filled some of that reading material. He’d just been too distracted to really be able to interpret what he’d read.

Tony didn’t even bother to temporize, not to her. That was the whole reason she had offered, and he had asked her to come. “Sex Ed with the Black Widow? I’m the luckiest boy alive.”

He wasn’t exactly laughing. Neither was she; he knew just enough about her history to not doubt her sincerity. Though she did raise a return eyebrow at the racier titles. “Omega sex tricks?”

“Gotta know my triggers.”

“Good answer.” Natasha swayed a little closer, closing the door behind her, both seductive and no-nonsense at the same time. She was close enough to touch now, and smelled… confusing. She wasn’t wearing one of her phernomonal perfumes, just her natural scent, something a little bit intoxicating, and little bit comforting. No wonder she was so good at her job. “I said I’d help you. You game?”

Tony gave her the pale imitation of the smile he’d used on the dozens of men and women who’d flung themselves at him over the years. “Yeah.” 

Natasha did a smooth, graceful roll of her neck, somehow managing to show both an alpha’s dominant stare and an omega’s bared-throated submission in the same gesture. 

“Get naked.”

“Oh good, and here I thought I was in for hours of wining and dining before we got down to the main event.” 

Natasha’s lips quirked as Tony shucked his shirt, and closed the rest of the gap between them. She tilted her head to brush her cheek with his, and he leaned into the touch, sharing the greeting with his packmate. He still might not entirely know what to make of her, but she belonged; he trusted her with this. She taken on leading the pack because she needed to, and she’d promised to help. Yes, he could trust her, of all people, to help him through his first trial run.

Her hands came up to rest lightly on his shoulders, almost like they were about to dance, and Tony forced himself to relax as much as he could. Between the wordless comfort of the pack bond and Natasha’s not-quite-an-alpha scent, the paranoia and fear Tony might have felt at having someone else close to him had been subsumed into wordless trust. She would go as slow as he wanted to give him what he needed. She would not hurt him.

“You thought sex was good before? You have no idea,” Natasha said, wasting no time. She ran her thumb down his stomach, the nail lightly scratching and leaving goosebumps in its wake. Even that touch was unexpectedly pleasant, and Tony struggled to keep his focus on both her words and his body. “Your orgasms are going to be earth-shattering, and you have a lot more ways to get off. I don’t know too many beta or alpha men who can get off just through penetration, but you will. Someone fingering you is going to feel better than a blowjob.”

“Bull,” Tony laughed. “If I were in full heat, fine, I’d believe you. But I’m not right now, and there’s not much that beats a blowjob.”

“I said I’d show you.” Natasha put her hand to her zipper and raised an eyebrow. Tony nodded, and gazed appreciatively as she stripped out of her catsuit. She was creamy pale underneath, and Tony was glad to pull her close to him, warming up that marble-cool skin. This was the casual intimacy he’d worked towards with Pepper and Rhodey, now sharing with the pack leader. It felt… right. Honestly, cleanly right.

Natasha nodded at the bed, and Tony quickly shed his pants before letting them to sink down into it. He let the closeness persist longer than he normally did, enjoying the smell of her hair, her quiet and non-threatening presence with him. Here they were, both naked, in the same bed, and just holding each other.

Natasha curled her fingers around his knee and Tony let his legs fall apart, exposing himself to her with a little twinge of unease. She waited, her head resting against his shoulder, her hands still, until Tony relaxed again. She leaned up to kiss him, trailing fingers over his nipples, making him gasp when a gentle pinch sent an intense burst of pleasure to both make his cock swell, and his hole start to moisten. The twin sensations were unexpected, or at least Tony hadn’t been in any state of mind to appreciate the keen differences between his beta body’s arousal and now before this very moment. He’d been too focused on getting off to take in the finer details, so swamped with the need to come that everything had just merged into a mindless scream for more.

“Whoa…” he squirmed a little and Natasha paused until he twitched his nipples back under her fingers. “Uh, damn. I-.” He bit off a gasp as she leaned over to lave one with her tongue, and his legs seemed to separate further of their own accord. He was hard and wet at the same time, and couldn’t decide what sensation he wanted to satisfy first.

“Touch yourself,” Natasha said, her lips brushing his nipple. “This is you. Right now, right here, this is you.”

He ran a hand over his chest, sliding through her hair briefly, before trailing down the slight roundness of his stomach. He resolutely kept going before he could drop back into anger, and closed a hand around his dick. That felt good, as always, but he when squeezed his buttocks together almost involuntarily, he gasped at the slick slide he felt, and the sudden urge to get his fingers inside him.

Tony swallowed a curse and stroked himself, dry and a little bit too hard, until he bit his lip and reached further down to slick his fingers. The first brush of his fingertips against his hole made those nerves light up with pleasure, and he found his first two fingers inside him to the third knuckle with barely any conscious thought. 

“Shit,” Tony whispered, eyelids fluttering open and shut as he dragged his fingers in and out of himself, amazed at how good it felt to simply be penetrated. The few times he’d let himself be fingered before, it had usually been as an adjunct to a blowjob, the lady or dude in question seeing his prostate for a super-happy ending. But this… It was like his whole channel was sensitive and accepting. 

“Feels good, I know,” Natasha murmured, and ran the very tip of her fingernail along the length of his cock, making him jump. “Does that still feel good?”

“Yeah…” Fucking fabulous actually, whole new erogenous zones combined with his golden oldies. He continued to move his fingers slowly, eyes closed as his arousal built, enjoying the tight, wet, slick feeling. He let out his breath slowly, opening his eyes to look at Natasha.

“That’s you,” Natasha repeated softly. Her hand, slick with lube she’d found in the bedside table drawer, closed around his dick and pumped at the same slow pace he was using on himself. “Like fingering a woman, isn’t it?”

He nodded, carefully controlling the pace, and Natasha stilled her hand.

“Does that bother you?”

He considered that, feeling himself, and gave a little shrug. “Maybe a little. Not as much as I thought it would.” He moved his fingers again before stopping, breath hitching at his building arousal. It wasn’t getting anywhere near as bad as it had with Steve, or even in Bruce’s lab, maybe just a little more than he would get during a typical one-night stand. Not that he’d had a lot of those recently, but he remembered how they went. The last time he’d…

…Well, he hadn’t had a one-night stand since the night before Afghanistan. But he had been with Pepper a few times after that, re-affirming their bond. Rhodey too, and even Happy, to a lesser degree. Never a full-on horizontal mambo, but a few nights or at least hours together, close, a little intimate, about what he’d intended to do with Steve before he’d gone off the rails. He knew how Pepper felt from the inside, had felt her quivering around his fingers as they’d kissed. And it did feel a little like he did now. He hadn’t lied to Natasha; he wasn’t as freaked out as he could have been. Any red-blooded person with a pulse who’d seen genuine omega porn couldn’t help but imagine, no matter how briefly, how it would feel like to be able to get that kind of enjoyment out of sex.

Well, at least it had looked like enjoyment from the other side of the screen. Having experienced it himself, Tony knew most of that enjoyment during actual heat was from relief, not pleasure. The relief from scratching that itch was as orgasmic as the most tantalizing sexual technique. But now? Now this was more about pleasure. The hedonistic part of himself was thoroughly happy with his fingers in his ass and Natasha’s hand on his dick. If he was going to have a major or minor bout of body dysmorphia, it didn’t seem to want to happen right now. 

He smiled grimly as he ran his other hand around the arc reactor. To be fair, he’d already adjusted to some pretty major body modifications in his life. The _physical_ changes he could deal with; it was everything else that came with them – the chemical dependency, unpredictable hormone spikes, and forced bond that was going to fuck him in the head and heart until he’d gotten them under control.

Better to start with mastering the physical. Learning new systems was something he did every day.

“If you’re all right with that, then try to get yourself off, your way,” Natasha said. Her voice was quiet, soothing, amusingly appropriate for her warm, professional hand on his intimate equipment.

This was by far not the strangest thing he’d ever done in bed though.

Tony nodded very slowly and sped up the pace, paying attention to his own feedback to let his pleasure mount. He was getting wetter by the moment, hotter, just like Pepper did before she came. Purely on instinct, he tried a little trick with his fingers he’d once been kinda famous for amongst the ladies, and damn near knocked Natasha off the bed when he thrashed in the throes of orgasm, drenching his entire hand with slick. A warm rush of contentment filled him as he came, though there was still a sense of something being missing, not quite complete. As he came back down to planet Earth, he realized he was still hard, and there was no evidence that he’d shot a load at all. Hell, he felt like he could still go another round.

“…What?” Tony croaked, blinking in bemusement.

“Cloacular orgasm. Omega man’s orgasm. Different than this.” Natasha stroked his cock again, and Tony rolled his hips into her hand. “You can come both ways, and more than once.” Her voice lowered, and she got very close to his ear. “Sometimes, if you’re very coordinated and athletic, or you have a good lover, you can come both ways at once. Time stops, believe me.”

“God,” Tony whispered, feeling Natasha’s lips brush his ear, and began to work his hips in earnest. Natasha tugged on Tony’s wrist, his entire hand soaked in his own slick, and replaced her hand with his on his cock. 

“Go on, yeah,” she urged, close to him, so close, flush with his body, but yet his were the only hands on himself now. He was okay, he was safe, she was safe, he was riding the trough of his orgasm, seeking another crest just a few strokes away-! His body arched like a bow when he came again, his come mixing with the slick on his hand in a slippery mess. It was good, it felt so incredibly good, but there was still a nagging lack, a faint hollow feeling that he had really started to hate. And he didn’t think he could really, truly relax until that hollow was filled.

“Need a little more?” Natasha asked gently, and Tony nodded again. “May I?” Another nod ( _just do it, fuck, I don’t want to remember why I feel this way_ ) and Natasha’s fingers slid inside him. She curled and spread them, her knuckles pressing against his walls like a knot, and finally it was like a switch was flipped. _Full, safe, good._ He squeezed against her hand, coming again as she held against him nearly shaking himself apart. Long minutes later, sated and full, he could finally relax, sagging into the mattress, and Natasha slid her hand free. 

“Thanks,” he said, a very long time later. It wasn’t quite the same, not the way it had been with Steve. There was still a sense of a lack, but it had faded, calmed, and he felt more in control now. He could handle this.

“Anytime,” she said.

“I doubt it. I like you, but not _that_ much,” he quipped, and saw Natasha smirk in return. She leaned over to grab tissues for them both, and Tony began to wipe the mess away.

“Good. This was just a demo, so you can tell whoever you really want what you need. Or just so you know what diameter toys to buy.” She quickly cleaned off her hand, and then used another tissue to blot at her brow. 

Tony snorted at that and pushed himself up so he could lean against the headboard. “Thanks anyway. I didn’t want to freak out Pepper or Rhodey.” He was used to being the most confident person in any given bedroom, and the idea of being like a teenager all over again, uncertain of himself in front of his two oldest friends, held no appeal. Natasha, though, he’d learn from the Black Widow without a blush. Maybe even bragging rights. Well, all right, bragging rights inside his own head; she’d probably murder him messily if he Tweeted anything about today.

“Until you figured out yourself, yeah.” Natasha paused and turned herself to sit cross-legged on the bed, pulling a corner of the quilt over to cover her lap. It didn’t quite hide her small but perfect penis, erect with the faint bulge at the base, indicative of a ready knot, but she ignored it utterly. He caught his lower lip in his teeth when he saw, but looked away. No, he was not looking for a knot. Not now. And she knew that. “Tony, you throw off pheromones by the truckload when you get worked up. Just be aware of that.”

“Oh.” Tony sighed. “Great.” He’d joked in the past about being irresistible, which for his string of one-night-stands had mostly been about charisma, good looks, and being filthy rich. Now he was going to have a giant “Fuck Me!” sign over his head if he got a little horny in public. He’d attributed Bruce and Betty’s use of the pheromone damper masks when they’d been testing his hormones during heat purely to the fact that he _had_ been in full heat. Apparently not. Yet another glorious side-effect he could chalk up to Steve fucking Rogers and his super serum blood.

“It could be,” Natasha said matter-of-factly. “I can remember more than one mission I would have willingly slit throats for that kind of control over the alphas I was sent to seduce. It would have been an asset.”

“That’d be funnier if I didn’t think you were deadly serious.”

“Controlling pheromonal output isn’t much different than not getting a boner in public, Stark, and I know you have plenty of experience with that.”

“Your confidence in my boners is touching.” He waggled his eyebrows salaciously, and Natasha rolled her eyes.

“Are you good?” she asked instead, with a glare that clearly indicated if he made another bad joke she’d probably taze him and leave him drooling on the bed.

And that was normal. Very strangely normal.

“A little,” he confessed. He wasn’t going to lie to her; it didn’t feel right. Natasha smiled very softly, almost tenderly, and leaned in to kiss him on the cheek.

“We can all work with that.”

 _We._ That was maybe the best thing Tony had heard since this all started.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can blame Not_You for this chapter with Steve's therapist, because a plot bunny was proposed as to, "What would that guy feel like after Steve went crazy?" Also, while I have been in therapy, it was not for PTSD, so I'm kinda doing some educated guesses, some research, and a lot of respectful talking out of my hat.

Fury was waiting for her outside Steve’s room. She had three-quarters expected that, the final quarter reserved for him remotely observing the entire time. But when the situation called for it, Fury preferred the hands-on approach.

“Didn’t expect to see you, sir.”

A lie, but Fury was used to that. Natasha did it reflexively, acting like a normal person to disarm her prey.

“You did,” he said. “You explicitly expected me one way or another. And I’m not going to issue you any orders on what you’re about to do.”

Her hand tightened on the messenger bag she had pressed against her hip, a never-seen thrill of nervousness threading up her spine.

“I have questions.”

“And he has answers. He’ll be more likely to give them to you than me.” Fury stepped aside. “I’ll be waiting.”

 _Watching_ , was what he really meant, Natasha knew. Watching to see if what she was going to do was going to end up in blood and broken bones. She nodded but hesitated before opening the door. She had questions, yes, but Steve didn’t hold all the answers.

“Steve was in therapy for bond shock, yes?” SHIELD was used to that – it certainly wasn’t the first time one of their own had lost his pack.

“You’ll have to ask him yourself.”

Natasha still didn’t open the door. Her own first pack had been twisted – sometimes they deliberately severed bonds to train their operatives. She couldn’t imagine what it had been like. She’d never known a true, healthy bond before Clint, before SHIELD.

That was the whole point of her being here. Because before approximately a week ago, she’d had a bond, a pack, some people could only dream of. And Natasha Romanov didn’t take the loss of her dreams well.

\--

Steve turned his head to look at her as she entered, the only part of his body he could really move. He was still stiff with bandages, braces, and casts, strapped firmly to the bedframe, multiple IVs penetrating his arm. So pale he had no real color, the faint red of his surgical scars, his blond hair, and his blue eyes tracking her were the only real spots of color in the sterile, white room. He looked like a classic victim, held steady against the advent of more pain. Natasha easily held up the mental picture of Tony, struggling for self-control, his personality already compromised to a degree he couldn’t even understand, to counter any feelings of compassion towards her former alpha.

She crossed to sit on his bed, one foot resting on the frame, and put the messenger bag down at the foot. With quick, economical motions, she freed his right arm from the elbow down, ignoring his surprise. As she worked, Steve made a formless interrogative noise in the back of his throat, urgent and stressed-sounding. Only one thing could get an injured alpha so worked-up.

“Tony’s doing all right,” she said quietly. “The pack’s supporting him, and Potts and Rhodes are there as his anchors. He has more lifelines than I think he even realizes.”

Some of the tension in Steve’s body suddenly evaporated.

“He also went into heat again today, and was not really happy about it.”

Steve made a sound behind his mask that might have been a curse.

“Bruce gave him one of his alpha shots. I helped him work out the first round’s spike mostly on his own.”

Steve made a motion with his free hand, looking desperate, and Natasha dug into her bag for a sketchpad and charcoal. No pencils. Not yet. The lines around Steve’s eyes deepened in pain, but he wrote awkwardly, _Safe?_

“Secure in the Tower.”

Steve looked relieved, almost blissfully so, and Natasha mentally shook her head. She’d taken over his pack, she’d held him down for painful punishment, and all he was doing was asking about Tony. The boy had it bad.

 _Why’re you here?_ Steve wrote.

“To talk,” she said casually. “I generally learned to influence people one at a time and fight solo; I’ve never led a group.”

Steve stared at her before writing very slowly, _You want my advice?_

“Yes. Help me help them. Help him.”

He wrote fast, the words going sloppy, _Will always help._ He hesitated very slightly before putting the period on the sentence, and Natasha knew he’d clipped off a word. _Him_ , most likely.

“Forgive me for thinking you might be feeling less than cooperative,” she said with deceptive mildness.

Steve went still and quiet, clenching his other hand into a bloodless fist before writing again. _Can’t be petty. Did something so wrong… Can’t go red. Dishonored Dr.’s words._

Not his medical doctors. Erskine, Natasha figured. Erskine’s dying words, his admonition for Steve to be a good man.

“The time off helped you think.” She kept her voice calm and low, expecting the tension showing in his other hand to explode at any time.

 _Nothing else to do. I’ll do anything…_ Steve trailed off and closed his eyes. Natasha could _see_ the conflict on his face, the way he strained at his bonds, and waited until he’d mastered himself enough to write again. _God, Tasha, I want him. I want him with us, I want to see Tony with us._ His pheromones spiked hard, and Natasha had to resist the pull against her omega side as Steve thrashed in the throes of an unreciprocated bond. All the pain and emotional fallout that Tony was suffering was not one-way, and with Steve not being able to touch or talk to his bonded, he was feeling that bond starting to wither ever-so-slowly. It hurt. Natasha knew how much it hurt to feel a bond rejected and start to diminish when you’d put everything you had into it. That had been one of her harshest lessons from her childhood.

It was a pain that never truly faded.

“Tony is doing well with us. But not with you. Never with you,” Natasha said very gently.

Steve sagged back against his bonds, calming himself a little, but was still clearly running hot.

“That bond runs both ways, you understand?” Natasha said, reaching up to push Steve’s hair out of his eyes. “Tony’s going to use every trick ever invented to short-circuit what you did. This is worse for him. He has to deal with a whole new dynamic on top of everything else. You were already an alpha when _you_ changed.” She kept her statements simple, almost patronizing, but Steve was so far gone inside a want and need he could never be allowed to have, she had to be certain he understood. “He’s changed so much more than you did, and that changes how he interacts with _everyone_ he’s even known or will ever meet.” Steve nodded, his breathing a little shaky behind his mask as he sank farther back into the bed. “Tony is already amazing, and he’s just as amazing as an omega as he was as a beta. If you hadn’t forced him, he was ready to join the rest of us. He still has, just not you.”

Steve stared at her for a long, long time before applying charcoal to the notepad again. _I am so stupid. I was so afraid. I was weak._

“You’re not weak,” Natasha said uncompromisingly. “You’re _not weak_ , and I damn sure know anyone SHIELD had you talk to never said or even implied that you were weak. Foolish. Oversexed. Desperate maybe, but not weak.”

He touched his forehead and heart… and groin, and tapped the word “weak” again.

“Too weak to resist,” she interpreted.

_Tempted._

He hesitated a long moment and wrote again.

_Wouldn’t say to Garcia. Couldn’t say. Afraid. He didn’t know._

“Garcia… your therapist?”

Steve nodded.

“Why?”

\---------------------------------------------

_“Why?”_

The word echoed in the observation room, the sound absorbed by Director Fury and the short, fit, dark-haired man who was staring into Steve Roger’s room as if hoping to be told the secrets of the universe.

The thing about working for SHIELD was you were expected to save the world and get no credit. _What_ you did to save the world could be anything from translating a conversation, driving a particular package to a particular place, killing someone quietly, extracting a secret, or even just locking a door. You were expected to be clever, quick-thinking, knowing when to obey and when to operate alone, when to think outside the box and when to stick to procedure as if your life depended on it. You put your life on the line and never got an ounce of public recognition for it.

Maybe it had been that fundamental difference that had caused this entire mess. It was different when you were supposed to - _required_ \- to be in the public eye. Thomas Garcia stood in the observational room, arms crossed across his chest, watching through the one-way mirror to Steve Rogers’ room with the intensity of a stooping hawk. He could feel the Director’s regard burning into his back, but refused to turn around. It was a bit of a coward’s move, but Fury couldn’t possibly blame him for that.

Six months ago, Garcia had been asked to save the world. And apparently he’d fucked it up. He wanted to know why.

\--

_“We want you to treat Captain Rogers.”_

That had been his assignment. The analysts had taken a long look at every psychologist and therapist they’d had and picked him to help Steve Rogers adjust to seventy years’ displacement in time. He hadn’t been the only one helping – there were people helping him with the fundamentals of living in 2012, people catching him up on seventy years of history, even a full medical team to check up on him and make sure his time in a glacier hadn’t damaged anything subtle in his body or brain.

_“We need you to help him with the things we can’t see are wrong.”_

Garcia had been flattered to have been picked. A little terrified, a little intimidated, because, hello, you’re trying to get _Captain America_ to tell you about his problems, but overall, flattered. He thought he’d had the background for it – good training, specializing in post-traumatic stress after he’d seen it nearly ruin a favorite uncle’s life. A few years working with people affected by natural disasters, then a longer stint working for the Army, helping soldiers who’d come back as invisibly scarred inside as some were outside. He’d worked with all dynamics, and had handled many of cases of bond shock before. Soldiers tended to bond closely, and when an IED took out all but one of a pack…

The survivor often carried a load of guilt and loneliness Garcia had rarely seen outside of the military. SHIELD agents weren’t that different; sometimes they were even worse. Because most IEDs were often sudden, and well-hidden, but put in place for purposes of inflicting fear and pain on anyone who came across them. SHIELD’s enemies more often targeted their agents specifically, by name or cover identity, for the purpose of individual revenge or intimidation. Losing a packmate under those circumstances could be even worse because of the feeling that if you’d just known a little bit more, had been more paranoid, gained more trust or trusted less, you could have saved a friend’s life.

Garcia had helped agents through that. He’d helped people through the loss of their packs, through broken bonds and terrible, senseless tragedies, through torture or the aftermath of missions where they’d been the hand that had taken other’s lives so closely they could feel their victim’s last breath. No science, no experience with the human mind and heart could cover every contingency, and the field of psychology could not claim iron-clad answers to even the most well-documented problems; Garcia never expected miracles. When working for SHIELD, he’d also learned to let go of expectations. SHIELD agents weren’t young, passionate kids drawn to serve their country, they were often the unexpected heroes, plucked from a wide variety of backgrounds, possessed of unusual skills paid for by high personal cost.

He thought that after ten years at SHIELD he’d at least have enough under his belt to start to understand what their colorful collection of agents needed to find solid mental ground again.

And he knew that for everything he thought he knew, he didn’t know nearly enough about this unusual man. There were problems he would face with Steve Rogers that he’d never come across before, that _no one_ had come across before. The best he could do was to prepare himself with the closest approximations he could muster. There was no one else who’d ever survived a seventy-year coma, but Garcia could try to approximate by talking with doctors, relatives, and the patients themselves who’d awakened from years-long sleep, or those who’d been raised in isolation from society, hell, even reading the accounts of feral children – anything to give him a leg up. 

_“Steve? Come on in.” Captain Rogers looked around Garcia’s office warily, like he expected enemies to leap out from behind the sofa and desk. Garcia mentally added another tally to his ongoing total of agents that expected to see sofa ninjas. So far the percentage was at a good ninety of everyone who’d come to see him. Paranoia was a survival trait for all of them._

_Steve hesitated just inside the doorway, hands clenching briefly, arms twitching like he was resisting going into parade rest. He mastered the impulse on his own, and sat in the nearest chair, back to the wall, when Garcia waved at him in invitation._

There was an advantage to dealing with Rogers that Garcia hadn’t had with many of his other patients – Rogers’ life was well-documented, and SHIELD had full access to the files. There had been several others over the years who had lived years of their lives off the grid, or who had worked for other employers previously who weren’t inclined to share paperwork. There had even been those Garcia had seen whom had security clearances so high he wasn’t allowed to know what they’d been up to. But a seventy-year ice nap had also meant all the old SSR files were declassified enough for Garcia to view. He hadn’t been hamstrung in terms of having to hash over the fundamentals of his background and service. 

_“Sir? They asked me to see you?”_

Garcia had armed himself for bear, shaking down every person Rogers had seen thus far for information and then mining his files for more. Orphaned as a teenager, grown up in the Depression, constantly ill and weak, picked on because he wouldn’t back down, but with a drive to stop the cruel that had led him to try every way he could to get into the army when war broke out again, there was a solid core of strength in Steve Rogers that Dr. Erskine had seen and responded to. It was also apparently what the serum had responded to, turning the skinny young man into the peak of human perfection without the side effects that had deformed Johann Schmidt and turned Dr. Bruce Banner into the Hulk. 

No good deed had gone unpunished, however, and Steve had spent nearly a year being a dancing monkey before he’d taken matters into his own hands. Garcia had looked through the reports on Rogers’ rescue of the remains of the 107th and privately marveled at how strong the core of the Howling Commandos must have bonded to get them out of that place safely. Dozens of missions later, success after success with his pack, and near two years together, everything had fallen apart again. Barnes died, Rogers’ oldest friend gone, and not more than two days later he’d taken a dive into the freezing ocean to save his country.

And when he’d woken up, he’d lost nearly everything he thought he’d died to save. He awoke to a country he didn’t recognize, social change on a massive scale, a political climate that couldn’t have been more different, and war that had changed out of all proportion. Above all, he’d woken up alone. There hadn’t been a living soul left who knew him when Rogers finally came to. Most of that had been out of cruelties of time; all of the Howling Commandos were dead. There were a few of the younger aides still alive, and in a nursing home, Peggy Carter. They’d though it would be even more traumatic to see her so old, though Garcia would have argued against it.

That hadn’t been his decision. He had to deal with Steve as he was now.

\--

_“I’m here to help you.”_

_“Are you a doctor?”_

_“Doctor of psychology.”_

_Rogers was good at being polite. Very good. But he couldn’t quite hide the very faint curl of his lip._

Garcia had been used to far worse. Agents had reacted to being forced to go to a shrink with anything from distain and amused indifference to stark terror. When you had made a career out of discovering secrets, you were very reluctant to reveal any of your own. When you were used to being strong, you hesitated to reveal anything you thought made you look weak. 

Not that he thought Rogers would ever say that. Nor did he think Rogers would admit any possible distain for Garcia’s profession. He’d probably play along very well, actually. Anyone who’d spent so much time as a kid getting poked and prodded by doctors (when they could be afforded) could get very good at humoring professionals. And they could become spectacular liars when it came to saying everything was “fine.” Garcia had both heard plenty of stories and seen countless examples of people who otherwise couldn’t lie their way out of a paper bag being able to convince close friends and family that they were perfectly fine.

Right until something terrible happened.

It was Garcia’s job to interpret “fine” until he figured out what “fine” was hiding.

_“Let me guess, Captain. You’re doing just fine. You don’t need to talk it out.”_

_Rogers paused, and then relaxed his hands very slowly against the chair arms._

_“Maybe I’m not?”_

_Garcia nodded encouragingly. “Why not?”_

_“I’m here.”_

_Seventy years out of time. Two and a half lifetimes that he hadn’t lived._

_“What was it like there?”_

_“You have the history books.”_

_“That’s not what I’m asking about.”_

_“Why do you even want to know?” Rogers asked. “I’m supposed to be learning about,” he waved his hand at the modern room with the modern décor and its modern view of modern Manhattan, “you know, now.”_

_Garcia would have preferred a less state-of-the-art space, but operational security was paramount for a man who’d broken out of SHIELD’s headquarters in a panic when he’d woken up._

_“Because it’s important to you. This,” Garcia waved his hand at the room, “isn’t easy. I’m not going to pretend it will be. If you want to talk about home, it’d let me know what’s important to you.”_

_“Why do you-?” Rogers bit himself off._

_“I can’t do the mission without knowing the parameters, Captain.” Garcia said. The military jargon sometimes worked when common sense wouldn’t, and Rogers relaxed minutely._

_“All right.” He nodded very slowly. “All right.”_

\--

Rogers had talked, not easily, not much more than his file, but he had talked. Garcia had been through session like that before – people needed trust before they could open up, particularly if therapy hadn’t been their own idea. Ideally it would have been best to let things develop, let Rogers gain more comfort and trust on his own, but… This was Captain America, this was SHIELD, and the parameters of normal did not apply to either. Rogers needed to get out in the world so he could start to save it again – Garcia would have had to have been entirely out of touch not to see that.

They couldn’t wait months. The hard questions had to happen soon.

\--

_“What’s making life difficult for you?”_

_Steve’s jaw clenched, the muscles rippling under his skin. “I’m seventy years out of my time and everyone I know is dead.”_ Obviously _, he’d added unspoken._

_Garcia didn’t take it personally. Sometimes you had to get very simplistic to break down what looked like a frightening emotional problem into manageable parts. “But what is making trouble? Do you sleep?”_

_Steve didn’t bother to deny he had trouble, at least. That level of candor was refreshing. “Not much. I don’t need to, especially after-.” He broke off and waved vaguely – either the serum or the ice, both could have changed his sleeping patterns quiet a bit._

_“Nightmares?”_

_“Sometimes.” Steve didn’t elaborate and Garcia let it slide for the moment._

_“You mentioned you didn’t know anyone here. Have you made friends?”_

_“Mostly my doctors. I haven’t had a chance to meet anyone, really.” Steve looked so very lost when he said that, younger than even his biological age._

\--

Some of what Garcia learned had been useful in letting SHIELD know the best way to help. Rogers had been let out of his well-intentioned cage, had met other agents, had been given a chance to see new things, or some of the few “old” things that still were around. He’d seen some of the new world, had found an old gym to work out some of his frustrations on equipment.

_“I go through three bags a session sometimes.” Steve had meant it as a joke, had smiled, and Garcia had grinned with him. But he had to ask._

_“Well, at least someone’s getting his exercise.”_

_“I have to be ready…” A little of that lost look returned, a commander bereft of those he was meant to lead, facing unknown enemies._

_“Who’re you fighting?”_

_Steve looked at him, startled._

_“You’re aware enough of your strength, unless you’re very, very distracted. Who do you see when you’re punching?”_

_“I- I just remember.”_

_“Is it intrusive?” Garcia asked._

_Steve cocked his head, puzzled._

_“When you remember, does it disrupt daily activities or cause unwanted physical reactions? Do you lose sense of time or place?”_

_Steve didn’t answer, his face very neutral, almost mask-like, his body language giving away nothing but tension. And for the seventy-year gap between them, Garcia had seen this reaction more than once._

_“Steve, I know it wasn’t the done thing to admit to feeling less than perfect. I’m not talking just about when you were growing up, but even now some people have this conception that if you’re feeling stressed or sad you should just ‘get over it’ and ‘pull yourself together.’ And they’re wrong.”_

_Steve’s neutral façade softened a little towards Garcia’s words – good, it seemed he hadn’t fully bought into the macho bullshit that still permeated so much of society at all levels._

_“For someone like you, always on display…” Garcia prompted._

_“I couldn’t let anything show. Couldn’t let it out,” Steve finished in a rush, looking relieved._

_“It is not weakness to ask for help if you’re feeling stressed or sad, particularly and especially if it’s making life hard for you. It’s no different than getting treatment for an illness when you’re feeling unwell.”_

_Steve blinked at that and leaned forward, actually looking honestly interested for the first time since he’d come in the door. He looked like he was ready to hear what he was doing here._

_“I’ve had soldiers and agents in here before. Some after hard missions, after they’ve lost someone, or if too many little things just pile up too high. I’ve had soldiers who’ve been in firefights where now even loud noises or certain other sounds send them back there, mentally. I’ve had agents who have lost people and felt like a failure at their jobs even if it was not their fault. They didn’t want to have to carry everything alone, and there were people there to help them. They wanted to feel as strong as they knew they were.” Garcia put every bit of sincerity and passion into his words, not bothering with a cooler professional demeanor right then._

_Steve jerked at that, Garcia’s words hitting right where they should._

_“I… think I see.” He was quiet a long time, and Garcia let him think. “Not intrusive. I just work out and remember. I need to know it was all still real.”_

_“It was. It was definitely out of the norm,” Garcia waved at Steve’s impressive physique, and Steve blushed a little, “but it was real.”_

\--

Nothing could give Steve back the seventy years taken from him, but little by little, SHIELD was trying to both give him something new and let him remember what he’d lost. Howard Stark had preserved Steve Rogers’ possessions, at least those he could find, so Steve had some literal reminders of home. A great deal of care had been taken with finding things for his apartment – vintage items or good reproductions, anything to give him an anchor, a sanctuary. There wasn’t much that could be done about the street outside his door, the music his neighbors played, but the building hadn’t changed much since the thirties and Steve… needed that little slice of home, particularly with everything else that had changed.

\--

_“It’s hard,” Steve said, prowling around the room in agitation. “The lady in 221 went into heat today – she’s right below me and I could smell-.” He cut himself off with a blush. “I know people are more… open about things now, but still.”_

_“I know there’s filtration in your apartment, but your sense of smell is probably-.”_

_“Really strong, I know.” Steve stopped and folded his hands behind his back, rocking back up on his heels and back. “I should spend more time at the Tower.”_

_“You said you appreciated the company of the rest of the Avengers, but needed your apartment.”_

_“But I should learn… I can be a better alpha to them. All of us, everything’s so new. I… miss what I had.”_

_“They were your pack, and your friends.” Garcia knew he was tensing a little in his chair and consciously tried to relax. An agitated alpha wasn’t a treat to be around if he wasn’t part of your pack._

_“Were.” Steve let out a long, slow breath, almost a sigh. They’d been trying to work on language, on separating past and present, letting Steve remember how things had been without clinging to them so hard that modern life became impossible. Dancing around death, in particular, was something neither Steve nor Garcia wanted to shy away from. Steve breathed in again, and whispered something under his breath. Without even listening, Garcia knew what it was – a mantra Steve had come up with, that the Avengers pack was his responsibilities, his pride, but not his replacements. They were new, but they were strong._

_“They’re strong, I can help make them stronger,” he murmured just audibly. An alpha’s mantra, but for a war-bonded pack expected to be flung into danger regularly, not unusual. Some of Garcia’s soldier patients had used similar words. It was part of his anchor, how he coped with being in the modern world._

_Steve shook his head, as if trying to clear it, and finally sat down. “They are strong,” he said, laughing very softly. “I’m not as used to betas being so aggressive. Or omegas! Threw me for a loop when I met Dr. Banner.”_

_“Does that bother you?”_

_“No! No, Peggy- Agent Carter was a beta, and a damn fine officer as well. And Bucky, Gabe, half the unit were betas. They helped us hotheads keep things in perspective. It’s just… now the betas are almost like alphas.”_

_“Does that include me?”_

_Steve laughed again, almost a shade too heartily. “I say betas are like alphas, but I guess look at most of the ones I know: Tony, Clint, Fury. Not good examples.”_

_A tiny bit resentment there – not entirely unexpected. Steve had enough to adjust to to not want to have to fight with his pack over the pecking order._

_“Dynamics are only a letter, or at least that’s the newest current slogan.”_

_“I know.” He waved a little dismissively. “Believe me, I lived through that involuntarily. I was treated as a beta for most of my life.”_

_“So your friends had to get to know_ you _instead of your dynamic,” Garcia pointed out._

_Steve opened his mouth and then shut it again._

_“Steve, if you’re going to spend more time in the Tower, use it well. You said it yourself, your pack is strong. And so are you. Making that strength work together will take time, and talking, and compromise on all your parts. Get to know them. You’ve already done this once before.”_

_“They won’t let me down,” Steve said absently, as if he were deep in thought._

_Garcia let him think, feeling proud that Steve was doing so well._

But if had known what would happen two weeks from that session, Garcia would have put a branding iron on his tongue before opening his mouth that day.

\------------------------------------------

Natasha continued her interview, uncompromising in asking for Steve’s advice as she was in putting him in his place.

“Consequences are epic with us, either good or bad. Take a minute and tell me what you can. You were a good leader, Steve.”

He picked up the charcoal again and began to write, his eyes very bright. _You have to think of everyone. You have to know them, not just their strengths, but what they’re doing, if they’re hurt, if they can do what you’re asking them to do. Use… use your pack senses. You’re no longer fighting alone. You’re not responsible for just yourself or even just a partner. They’re the fingers in your fist._

 _You’re a good fighter, Natasha, you don’t need me to tell you how to take down the enemy. Know capabilities, breaking points._ He flushed hard. _Weaknesses_

“We can only be betrayed by someone we trust, Steve.”

There was what sounded like a moan of agony behind the gag. She waited patiently as the spider of her code name as Steve fought himself back down to coherency.

 _Don’t be afraid of big effects. Know you are subtle – most of the others aren’t. Use that shock and awe._ The charcoal hovered above the page for a split second. _You already know the principles. Just always think of them._

Natasha nodded and ripped that page away, putting it into her bag before turning back to him, letting some of the alpha anger that had been simmering show itself on her face. “Steve, I wanted Tony too. He asked me to help him – I was right there with him when he asked me to help him through his heat. But I couldn’t hurt him. I am not the poster child for healthy pack bonds and I _knew_ I couldn’t hurt him. How could you know one of your pack was _hurting_ and keep doing what you did?”

Steve stared at her, his eyes looking pale and a little shocky. _I needed him. I couldn’t lose him and I needed him._ Natasha made a subtle gesture and Steve expanded on that explanation. _Then he went into heat and needed me and by then I was so deep into it and I didn’t want to make myself stop. I felt the bond and it was so strong and I thought somehow I could make it all right._

“You lied to yourself. Bald-faced lied to yourself, because you took a hit from _Thor_ and were somehow still thinking there was light at the end of the tunnel, didn’t you?” Steve didn’t answer, and Natasha took his chin in her hand and made him meet her eyes. “Why did you need him? Did you think he was going to leave?”

 _I miss…_ Steve’s face contorted in remembered pain.

“I know about Bucky, Steve. Was he omega?”

_Beta._

“If he had stayed home like omegas used to do, do you think he could have survived?”

Steve closed his eyes.

“Did you ever talk to Garcia about him?”

_Barely._

“Big brave man keeping it all inside,” she said, a hint of sing-song sarcasm in her tone.

 _So strong I broke,_ Steve wrote slowly.

Natasha laid her hands on both sides of his jaw and felt the impressive hardware under his skin, what had been necessary to silence someone of Steve’s abilities.

“Yes, you broke. You cut Tony to the bone when you did. If we let you fight with us, are you going to cut anyone else?”

The charcoal was a stub and Steve quickly scribbled one last word on his writing pad. _Pencil?_

“They won’t let me give you pencils. You know why.” She handed him another charcoal.

_Won’t suicide._

“You see, that’s what they all say.”

Steve stared at her as he very slowly and deliberately crossed himself.

_I’m not a good man, but I believe some things still._

“Do you still believe in heroes, Steve Rogers?”

He nodded, his eyes very bright with unshed tears.

“I don’t think I am, or you are, but we can use whatever we have left to do that job alone.”

He turned his head, deliberately baring his throat in submission, but Natasha could see the tension in his body still. For such over-developed alpha instincts, that was as good as she could hope for while he was still so freshly damaged. She bent to bite his throat, accepting his surrender.

\--

Garcia watched Agent Romanov quietly and methodically lay Rogers’ soul bare with little regard for the consequences. She cut deep and fast, with experience born of brutal training, old and new bonds, and insight gained through a life that could have grayed the hair of any three normal people. And Rogers responded with stunning honesty Garcia had not been able to elicit from him, not in months of therapy, not with everything he had known. But here at rock bottom, silenced and alone, Steve had all the time in the world to consider, and no room to avoid his crimes.

Put in that corner, he could either rise up with whatever he had left, or crumble and die.

He’d chosen to stand as far as Romanov would let him.

Garcia’s fingernails bit into the flesh of his palms, the pain finally bringing him back to himself.

“Have you ever worked with the Black Widow before?” Fury asked from behind him.

“No, sir. She came to SHIELD before I did.”

“Agent Romanov will always get the job done, but she’s still learning about leaving someone alive after she gets what she wants out of them. That’s something you have never had to worry about.”

Garcia turned around, consciously relaxing his hands.

“I don’t need to tell you that the only person responsible for Rogers’ actions in this Rogers,” Fury said, his voice flat.

“Sir-.”

“Garcia, in the last year we have all suddenly learned about the certain existence of alien life, that gamma radiation can be harmful, that a self-serving weapons’ designer playboy can have a change of heart, and that a World War II veteran could survive leapfrogging seventy years into the future in an iceberg. I brought all those people together to fight the battles we never could. I expected something explosive, and frankly, spectacular. But I never expected miracles. You can give a branch, hell, a whole tree to a drowning man, but it’s up to him to grasp it. You offered Rogers a forest of help, and then he turned and swam for the person next to him and stood on his shoulders to gasp for air.”

The Director did have a way of putting things. Garcia looked back over at Steve and Agent Romanov, still not convinced. “Doesn’t keep me from feeling like a dumbfuck rookie who got people killed for not doing basic recon.”

“You wouldn’t be human if you didn’t.”

“Sir…” Garcia trailed off, not sure what was next. He was too intelligent, too experienced to think there was a way back from this. Even if the Director held him blameless, Garcia did not. SHIELD hired practical perfectionists for a reason. Where did you go after having a hand in severely messing up the dynamics of the pack meant to save the world from the impossible? After seeing his words not be enough to prevent two people from being irrevocably changed against their wills?

“Severance or reassignment?” Fury asked.

Garcia closed his eyes. He’d done a lot of good over the years; helped a lot of people put their lives back together. He was sure there were people walking around, doing their jobs, living their lives, loving their families and partners because he’d been able to point them in the right direction and help them find their strength. He thought that maybe, just maybe, what he’d already done might karmatically balance what he’d failed to do.

“Severance,” he said decisively, opening his eyes.

“See Sitwell, he’ll take care of the details.”

Garcia turned and left without a backwards glance. Fury turned his attention back to the room on the other side of the glass, watching Rogers as Romanov tied his arm down again and left the room. Silently, Fury tallied names on his fingers – Stark, Potts, Rhodes, Hogan, Banner, Ross, Barton, Romanov, Thor. He added a tenth, pressing the fingers of both hands to his thighs – Garcia.

“You better have enough belief in you to make up for ten lives you’ve changed, Rogers.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mentions of mpreg in this chapter, just FYI.

He couldn’t get enough. Tony rose up on his knees, Steve’s cock nearly sliding out of him, and then slid down again, Steve driving his hips up to meet him in perfect, instinctual rhythm. Every inch inside him was so utterly necessary for him to live, every stretch of Tony’s walls around Steve’s girth everything he’d ever wanted in the world. 

“More, God, Steve, I need it!” Tony gasped out, his thighs burning as he resumed a pace that made sweat roll down his face and set his pheromones into overdrive. Steve made a vague murmur of urgent pleasure and just fucked him harder, fucked Tony into coming with a mindless moan, fucking him into Tony having to fall to the side, too exhausted to ride but too horny to stop.

“I’ve got you. I’ll take care of you.” Steve’s hands positioned him on his hands and knees and then his cock was back inside, filling the unendurable empty space inside him. “You’re so good, Tony. You’re perfect, and I’ll take care of you.” Steve’s words became more and more broken by tiny gasps as he fucked into Tony in a punishing pace that sent Tony mewling into the mattress, finally shouting a muffled cry of relief as Steve drove in hard and stayed there, his knot swelling with perfect, brutal pressure before he spurted his potent seed deep into Tony’s body. 

Tony let out a noise like a sob in relief, limp as Steve dragged him upright, his chest to Tony’s back, his knot digging in just a little deeper, making them both jerk a little in reaction. Steve had his nose buried at the juncture of shoulder and neck, smelling the thicker perfume there from the bonding gland beginning to spread its wealth in Tony’s sweat. Deep in the muscle, following part of the lymphatic system, the bonding gland would never be more swollen and vulnerable on a made omega in his first heat. A little transfer of bonding hormones through close contact was inevitable with dear friends and packmates even amongst betas, but Steve’s nose was swiftly following by his mouth, lapping up the potent, intoxicating scent, and then his teeth, lightly scraping over raised flesh, swollen to its maximum extent.

“Steve, Steve, please,” Tony whispered, begging for his alpha’s bond, his alpha’s touch. The bond would keep them together, aware of each other, sensitive to each other’s needs and moods, synching their heats and ruts. How couldn’t he want that? Tony bent his head down and exposed the area, mouth opening up in a silent scream as Steve lapped at the sensitive place, and finally bit down hard. Oily secretions flooded over his skin and into Steve’s mouth, making him moan and shift inside Tony, unexpectedly shoving in hard and coming again. Tony blissed out on the sensation of Steve coming inside him, his own cock spurting in sympathy without a single other touch. Steve’s tongue caressed the skin while his teeth kept a firm hold on Tony, gathering up every single drop of the unexpected bounty while laying his scent deep into his omega. Like a flower unfolding, Tony felt the bond open up between them, Steve pouring himself into Tony’s mind like he’d always meant to be there. In that instance, Tony couldn’t have denied him anything.

“God, Tony,” Steve whispered, letting go with his teeth to nuzzle through Tony’s hair. “You’re amazing. I’ve got you. I’ll keep you safe. Always, you can count on me. I swear, I’ll always keep you safe. We’re a family now.”

Steve’s hands drifted up and over Tony’s swollen belly, huge with a litter of Steve Roger’s young. He chuckled in Tony’s ear as he felt the strong little feet kicking out, and repressed a moan as the vibrations pulled on their knotted connection. Sighing with contentment, Steve’s hands slid up to cup the heavy, milk-filled breasts that had grown in the past month, ready and waiting to feed the energetic brood they’d made between them. They ached with need, and Steve pinched his nipples expertly, pulling on them and making drops of milk leak out.

“When I’m done knotting you, I’m going to suck on your tits for hours. I’m never going to stop making you feel good, Tony. I’ve got you.”

Tony moaned in wanton desire, pushing his heavy breasts into Steve’s clever fingers.

“I need you, Steve,” he said, turning his head to let Steve nip and lap at his neck again. “I want to do this forever. I feel so fucking good…”

“Everything I’ve given you,” Steve said, his words vibrating right in Tony’s ear. “Your body’s fixing itself from the residual serum. I’m making you stronger, younger. We’ll be able to do this forever, Tony. I promise.” Another groan, and a hot rush of more come flooded into Tony’s body. He looked down past his new huge tits, seeing the swollen, gravid mound of his belly swell even more as Steve’s seed took root inside him. “Look at you, you’re gorgeous…” 

Tony’s eyes stole to a mirror on the door across from the bed, seeing himself on his knees. Steve was holding him up, his cock buried inside him, Tony’s stomach so huge he knew he would never be able to get out of bed, Tony’s own cock hard and flushed and pressed up against the new curve of his belly. His tits were glories to behold, providing so much cleavage they eclipsed the arc reactor, the nipples swollen and distended from Steve’ relentless attention. Above that Tony’s face looked smoother and younger than it had even twenty years ago, his hair longer and pulled to the side to let Steve continue to deepen the bonding process. His mate was a glorious golden god of a man, and Tony felt himself becoming more and more pliant as Steve focused all his attention on keeping Tony buried in pleasure.

He’d never looked so beautiful and content in all his life.

\--

Tony woke up in a cold sweat, feeling like he’d just ran a marathon with the Hulk chasing him, his bed soaked with slick as his body raged through a resurgence of heat so strong Tony couldn’t do anything but hump futilely against the mattress for a few seconds. He finally managed to roll over to the nightstand and grab one of the alpha shots, injecting himself with a pathetic moan that it wasn’t something stronger. Breathing hard, he grabbed the alpha dildo next and slammed it inside him, twisting the base to make it expand before stroking himself the three and a half times he needed to come.

Two agonizingly pleasurable minutes later, the worst of it had passed, leaving him with a clear head. Tony was able to sit up (with some care for the length of plastic and silicone still inside him) and wrap his hands around his knees, shuddering slightly through the remains of his nightmare. The worst part, the absolute worst, was the fact that he desperately wanted to fall back into that dream. Part of it hadn’t even been a dream, just a memory. Tony had been so out of his mind with need he hadn’t been able to say no, or even wait, when Steve had bitten down on his painfully sensitive gland and bonded them together so strongly. If Steve had wanted to, in that moment, Tony would have gladly born him children. He would have turned over his new womb to serve his alpha without a second thought, if Steve had only asked him. And Tony would have enjoyed every second of it. Had Steve possessed an underground bunker, Tony would right now be being fucked into oblivion and just asking Steve for more. Without the option of escape, Tony knew, without a second of a doubt, he would have been pulled back into Steve’s touch.

“Shit,” he said out loud, his hands white-knuckling over his skin. This was not going to be a good day for him. Three weeks today. Steve was coming back today. _I don’t have to see him. I don’t have to ever see him again except at a distance through the HUD. He’d have a bitch of a time getting onto my floor and the pack will punch his face in if he tries. **I** will punch him in the face with the suit on if he tries._ Tony breathed out, slow and careful, cleared his mind of anything except the feel of his own body, and set to evening out his own hormones. He wasn’t exactly in heat, thank God, more like a brief heat-spike. The two times he’d gone into heat, plus Bruce and Betty’s monitoring of his hormones, had given him something of a handle on what a real cycle looked like, rather than just a sort of hot flash. He should be able to get himself calm enough for public viewing in an hour. And a cold shower.

“Sir?” JARVIS’ voice broke into his meditation, and Tony just sighed.

“Yeah?”

“I have finished correlating data concerning your biological rhythms over the past three weeks.”

“Anything usable?” Or signs of impending stability. Tony would take either at this point.

“Sir, using my own clandestine monitoring of SHIELD’s internal security monitors, I have noticed a decided spike in your own pheromones and sexual responses whenever Captain Rogers has had an emotional reaction. Also, he has had episodes of nightmares and disturbed rest that correlate with your own.”

Tony dropped his head back and stared at the ceiling, feeling the sex toy shifting inside of him, the slick-damp cloth of his pants clinging to his ass and thighs, and wondered if this was some sort of cosmic penance for all the shitty decisions he’d made before getting shrapnel slow-dancing toward his heart. That damned bond. There was some tiny comfort that if Steve hadn’t been feeling particularly guilty, at least he was getting Tony’s screwed-up sleep schedule beamed right into his brain, but less encouraging was the fact that Tony’s nightmares were getting him Steve’s protective alpha backlash in the form of needy mini-heats. It would have been a hell of a lot more encouraging if Steve had been sleeping like a baby and Tony was just working through his issues in his own special way. At least that would have meant the bond was getting weaker.

“Dr. Ross did indicate that reducing the effects of the bond would take a great deal of time and effort, sir.”

“Yeah,” Tony said, and closed his eyes. “Yeah.” He waited another ten minutes before speaking again. “Cool shower, JARVIS.”

“Right away, sir.”

Tony drug himself to the bathroom and out of his clothes, pulling the ridiculously large dildo out of him and dropping it in the heap of things to be burned. The worst of the urges had passed for now, and Tony had exceedingly justifiable reasons for not wanting to get used to the idea of having a constant cock plugging him up. Reasons didn’t matter shit to his new, greedy nerve endings that whimpered with the loss of that comforting feeling of fullness, but he had to start somewhere. Cold showers were excellent places to start, he’d found.

Tony leaned against the wall, letting the multi-level sprays hit him from all angles, cleaning away the layers of sweat and scent that had left him smelling eager and open in a way he definitely wasn’t feeling. Losing that smell, at least temporarily, let him finish calming down and relaxing enough to feel a little more normal. He absently touched a corner of the water-sealed control panel, and part of the wall turned into a mirror under his fingers. He’d installed it for far kinkier and narcissistic reasons than he’d admit, a lifetime ago when playing up to outrageous rumors had become a fun game to while away hours between his next big breakthrough. Now he studied his own face, touching the skin and looking at the corners of his eyes, his mouth, seeing echoes of dream-Steve’s words there. 

Bruce had noticed it before him, pointing out the subtle changes and the undeniable fact that yes, made omegas usually experienced some slight changes beyond the obvious, their bodies taking advantage of the rush of chemical and hormonal changes to make more general repairs while their omega organs were developing. But since they changed over the course of a year, any subtle little healing, any lessening of scars or tightening of skin, was difficult to detect. Not so much with Tony, with Steve being… Well.

The clock had rolled back. Not twenty years, like Tony had dreamed about, and for certain his heart wasn’t spitting out shrapnel on its own, but the finer signs of age were smoother, and some were gone entirely. It was definitely noticeable. He’d been marked. Tony made the mirror vanish and shook his head, lifting it to get more water rushing past his ears to drown out his thoughts. Marked. Right. Like anyone with eyes in their head or a nose on their face wouldn’t be able to tell even without that. He didn’t need any more reasons to be angry.

He absently rubbed one hand over his shoulder, over the place where Steve had bitten him, bonded him, forced them together. Even Tony, who was a poster child for the bonding-shy, had indulged in a little decorous neck-nibble once or twice with Pepper and Rhodey. That had been after a decade, mind you, but they had done some pheromone-swapping, proper necking, all that jazz, because even though Tony’s pack was tiny, it didn’t mean he didn’t care, damn it. But Steve, he’d waited until Tony was as tender and swollen as an overripe fruit and then latched on with jaws of steel, laying their scents into each other with all the subtlety of a jackhammer.

Tony had been utterly, utterly relieved that Pepper had made the suggestion she had for Steve’s punishment and taken away his ability to bite, to bond. Not being able to talk was good. Not being able to reinforce that fucking bond was better. Making sure it couldn’t happen to anyone else if Steve snapped? Priceless.

“Off,” Tony said, and the water stopped. He stayed in the same position, taking stock of himself, and finally sighed. He was okay. Steve was coming back to the Tower today, and Tony was doing okay.

He toweled himself off and wandered back into the other room, armoring himself up in a good suit and tie, the strip of cloth the universal sign for “all business in the front, _and_ the back.” He told himself that was all he really needed to go about his daily routine. He wasn’t going to meet Steve face-to-face. Natasha and the others had already hashed out their battle plans, accounting for the fact that Steve wouldn’t be talking anymore, unless JARVIS had to relay anything tactically significant. Tony wouldn’t even have to worry about battle practice with him. The pack had his back. He was going to be okay. 

_Keep saying that. And don’t fucking stop, whatever you do._

Tony tightened his tie to a comforting snugness and went down to the workshop.

\--

There was a freedom in not having a close-bonded pack. You went where you wanted to, did what you wanted to do, not having to worry about the connections and dynamics around you. That didn’t give you a license to be a total asshole, but it did give you the option if you’d had a bad enough day. Pepper, Rhodey, and Happy had been the extent of his pack for four years, since he’d destroyed Obie, but they knew him. They let have him his space, worked with him with subtle understanding, getting, really _getting_ the fact that he didn’t want to have to deal with the emotional repercussions of a pack. He had plenty of repercussions just being him with his friends, but to add a close pack-bond on top of that?

Way more than he ever intended on dealing with.

Bad romantic movies would have you believe that all pack-bonding ended up in puppy piles (if it was a PG romcom) or communal living punctuated by orgies (if the filmmaker wanted something a little spicer). Reality was…

Reality was _real._

Reality didn’t involve someone like Obie practically trying to live in his head, with only legendary Stark stubbornness making him back down. Reality wasn’t Pepper trying to change him any more than normal, and those changes were only because Tony inhabited a different world and Pepper had a better idea of how to relate to real people. Reality was Rhodey dropping by a beer and bitch session while they watched the Lakers, and then Rhodey going home again.

Reality wasn’t the Avengers trying to cuddle their omega into pliancy, and really, honestly, Tony was a fucking genius and maybe he should have noticed that Obadiah Stane wasn’t the poster child for a healthy pack, and didn’t he have eyes in his head? Thor didn’t try to displace Betty to get at Bruce, Natasha never asserted her dominance over Clint except in drinking contests and sparring matches, and even Steve had-.

Puppy piles hadn’t ever been an Avengers thing. They all had too many issues to sleep, or wake up, with a strange limb holding them down.

But still. Still. Even reality made it hard to walk into the communal movie room once his latest heat and heat-spike had passed, still a little sore and scent still a bit high even after a _lot_ of showers, but so incredibly bored of his bedroom that he had to get out before he started throwing things. Traditionally he solved problems with any interaction with actual people by heading down to the workshop and making things. The math of engineering was a quantifiable, answerable, repeatable thing, and math problems always came out the same way. 

People didn’t. People had always been Tony’s greatest mystery. 

Except now. There was a faint tug on his heart, the sort of thing he’d had with Obie and had fought against, reflexively, for decades, but this… It didn’t have the edge of demand he’d feared.

“Hey,” Clint said, waving from the ludicrously oversized armchair he’d gotten for Thor, but Clint had somehow appropriated, reserving the equally big ottoman for Natasha to sprawl on with the bonelessness of a cat. There was more warmth in his tone than Tony was used to ( _he’s not humoring you_ ), and it was just… strange to hear. Not bad but just… not expected ( _they nearly killed Steve for you_ ). This wasn’t the immediate aftermath, this was supposed to be something like daily life, and daily life was when Tony had a tendency to fuck things up rather spectacularly.

From the encouraging looks from Bruce and Betty, Thor and Jane, hell, even Pepper and Rhodey, they weren’t going to let him fuck things up.

There was a nagging sense of something missing ( _Steve was downstairs on his floor; Tony didn’t even have to think about that_ ), but Tony didn’t want to think about that.

“Hey,” Tony said, rolling his shoulders out of an inadvertent defensive hunch and sitting down on the couch, Pepper on one side, Rhodey on the other. Usually he preferred the end seat so he could pop up if an idea struck him, but today it seemed all right to have them near. Pepper was used to his restlessness, and Rhodey just took it in stride. Together, they smelled like homecoming.

This wasn’t a puppy pile, or even that fiercely intense acceptance he’d gotten when he’d first broken the news. This was just… warmth all around him. Warmth without heat.

He thought he could get used to this.

\--

If you’d asked Tony before Iron Man, he’d have cheerfully said that his body wasn’t his own, that it belonged to the women of the world. If you’d asked Tony after he’d become Iron Man, he’d have more seriously said that his body was mean to save lives (and kick ass).

You took certain things for granted, like being able to get up in the morning and not have to worry about if you were going to go into an incoherent hormone storm.

Which made waking up with all faculties intact and all urges his own all the more precious. Tony realized he’d gotten a little complacent since Afghanistan. Not waking up with a car battery strapped to your chest helped foster the illusion that you were in control of your life. 

“Ready, sir?” Happy asked, gloved hands coming up, hiding his worry where his headgear didn’t. Tony ducked into the ring, bouncing in place and warming up muscles he hadn’t exercised in a while. Other than that worry, and really, Tony wasn’t going to hold that against Happy because, well, this was pretty close to normal.

Tony raised his own gloved hands, ready to get back into the game.

\--

The stray debris scythed through the air, and it was all Tony could do to blast the worst of it away before another chunk smashed him out of the air. Air left his lungs as he impacted with the ground at a velocity he really could have done without. He couldn’t even gather the thought processes necessary to move. Or even consider _why_ moving was necessary. 

A grinding sound intruded on his semi-consciousness. A whine followed, then a spot of red light searing into his brain.

“Sir, you are being targeted.” JARVIS’ dry voice penetrated Tony’s concussive lethargy.

He had to move.

“Sir, your placement is very poor for evasive maneuvers.”

_No shit, J_ Tony thought, and tried to move his hand. _Gotta go…_ He could hear again, the grinding whines of machinery from the latest batch of Doombots (seriously, Victor, get a damn life) rampaged around the harbor. 

_“Anyone have eyes on Tony?”_ Clint called into the comm.

Without thinking too hard, Tony knew, vaguely, where everyone was. Clint was up and over left, Natasha and Steve straight ahead, Thor and the Hulk moving somewhere right of center. But they couldn’t see him. They’d lost sight of him. That… was bad.

There was a fucking annoying red light in his eyes.

“SIR!” Jarvis’ voice registered real alarm, and Tony felt Iron Man moving on its own as JARVIS employed emergency overrides, prying itself out of the crater he’d created. Tony’s vision cleared enough to see a beetle-like Doombot at the lip of the crater, its targeting laser leisurely scanning him for the weakest point of attack.

 _Oh, shit._

Tony’s body was still partially trapped, and he put all the effort he could into getting himself free. Concrete grated against him with a sickening sound, and Tony’s vision swam, his head pounding. 

“Little… help here,” Tony grunted into the comm. This was not going well. One could even say it was going very, very badly. There was a high-pitched whine of a charging energy weapon, and Tony held his breath, waiting for the impact and praying the recent damage had left the armor intact enough to take it.

A wordless howl raged over the comm as a red-white-and-blue thunderbolt landed between Tony and the Doombot, sparks flying everywhere as the plasma canon splashed off Captain America’s vibranium shield. Two bounds forward, and Steve used the shield to slice the bot’s head in two, then off completely. The pieces tumbled down the crater to rest at Tony’s feet as he finally got himself vertical. Steve turned to him, his white mask still looking out of place against his uniform, his eyes bright with battle rage and something more.

This was the closest they’d been to each other in three months.

Primal anger was resonating down the bond, alpha rage roused to defend his omega against all threats. It felt like Steve was right next to him, inside him…

It hit Tony with as much force as the debris that had knocked him from the sky. Part of him wanted to collapse against Steve’s side, kneel at his feet, grateful at his alpha’s protection and wanting to show him that in the most visceral way possible.

“Captain Rogers would like to know if you’re all right,” JARVIS said diffidently.

Steve’s request in JARVIS’ voice broke the spell, and Tony took a single step back before blasting off. 

“Fine!” he said curtly. Pain still throbbed in his head, but Tony ignored that in favor of looking for more Doombots that were in need of destruction. Pain and anger were potent antidotes against an emotional need he hadn’t been ready to fend off.

A half-hour later, SHIELD had arrived to finish the mop-up, and Tony could finally land on the roof next to Clint, knowing Steve was on the other side of the battlefield. He sat down on the balustrade and took off his helmet, breathing the salt air, liberally besmirched with the scent of hot metal and scorched insulation. Clint finished talking with someone over the comm, then walked back over and sat next to Tony, bow held loosely in his hand. Scattered below, Tony could vaguely feel the rest of the pack slowly converging, Thor close to Bruce (probably helping him with his emergency pants), Natasha alone, Steve swiftly moving away, as had become standard. He had to be on a SHIELD transport; no one would stand for him to be in the Quinjet without an unacceptable risk of violence.

Well, for a given value of unacceptable.

There was an unsaid question lurking behind Clint’s eyes and casual posture, one he wouldn’t ask out loud, but Tony answered it anyway.

“Yeah,” Tony said.

“Yeah?” Clint asked.

“Yeah.”

Clint nodded and went on the comm again. “Nat. ‘Yeah.’”

Tony smiled a little and didn’t flinch when Clint dropped a quick, dry kiss, just a bare warm pressure of lips, on his forehead.

“Didn’t think you were so touchy-feely, Barton.”

“For my next trick, tonsil hockey,” Clint said in a pseudo ringmaster voice. 

Tony laughed a little at that and got up, feeling the strength of the armor all around him, and tried to ignore the hollow-victory feeling in the pit of his stomach because Steve was getting further and further away from him.

“I’m gonna take a detour on the trip home.”

“Yeah?” Clint asked.

“Don’t start that again.”

\--

Flying in Iron Man was Tony’s best way of thinking, other than tinkering in the workshop. And of the two, only flying kept him inside a shell of armor, which had some really excellent psychological benefits. Particularly when he was about to do something really stupid. He remembered Fury’s words about Volkov vividly, that even recordings of his voice affected him to this day. Well, he wasn’t going to do that, exactly.

Somewhere below him, his pack was waiting for him, pillars of strength and acceptance he could lean against anytime he wanted. Maybe he should, for what he was about to do. But somehow he was certain they would try talk him out of it, probably with the best intentions in the world. 

Tony was still enough of the rogue beta he had been to ignore conventional wisdom and try something just to see what would happen. Something to see if the “Yeah,” with the silent tag of, _I’m all right_ was as true as he fondly imagined it to be.

“JARVIS, is St- Rogers back at the Tower?”

Tony knew he was, but the question was the kind you asked when you wanted to know about someone whom you didn’t know well. He was fully ready to carry on that charade for the semblance of normalcy. 

“Yes, sir.”

“Open a line.”

JARVIS paused long enough to let Tony know that this was a terrible idea. “Yes, sir.” A faint click. “The line is open. Captain Rogers inquires about your health.”

JARVIS’ dry translation held nothing of Steve’s voice, his tone, inflection, wording, just a filter to convey his meaning without pulling on any of the strings Steve had tied to Tony’s heart and mind. It worked well enough the few times Steve had had something to say in a fight, but hearing it outside of a world-saving brawl… it felt like having an IM conversation with Google translate.

“I’m fine.” Tony’s head was pounding, and he was pretty sure he was bruised from neck to knee, but for an Avenger, that was fine.

“Captain Rogers indicates the hit you took was very hard, and urges you to seek SHIELD medical attention.”

Tony manfully resisted the urge to tell Steve where to shove his concern. Maybe part of it was just normal protectiveness, but Tony really did not have the inclination to separate that from Steve’s overdeveloped alpha instincts.

“He also, in a tone of sincerity, extends his profound apologies to you.”

Tony had been expecting the apology, but had half-expected to have to elicit it from Steve. To have it spontaneously was not how he’d planned to have this go. He opened his mouth to spit out bitter words he’d been keeping behind his teeth, the usual true clichés about how sorry didn’t fix anything, how Steve should have thought of that while Tony had still been a beta, how Steve could just-.

Fuck.

Steve’s apology didn’t change anything. Neither did Tony unloading more rage onto him. Not when that rage was tangled up with blood pounding through his veins and Steve’s blue eyes hot and protective above his mask, and the brief thought of punching Steve’s face devolving to something else with sweaty bodies grappling, and damn it, Tony didn’t need his own anger feeding back on the bond and giving him another night of damnable dreams. Steve was sorry. He’d come to Tony’s rescue because he’d felt him in danger. He was also poison to Tony’s mind.

JARVIS had been right. This had been a terrible idea.

“Cut the link, J. Let’s go home.”

As the Tower loomed in Tony’s vision, he could feel his pack there, their welcome warming him, and over that, the bright flash of hope/shame/need from Steve, stronger than even Natasha’s pleasure at the pack being together again. Tony landed, taking a few deep breaths as the armor came off. The support of his pack near him was its own sort of armor, but it was armor with a red-white-and-blue weakness. That damn bond between them was supposed to weaken in time, but patience had never been Tony’s strong suit.

Maybe someday things would work out for the best. But if Tony had been that sort of guy, he’d probably still be trapped in Afghanistan making weapons for every two-bit warlord that came along. He’d made Iron Man in a cave with a box of scraps.

Here he could make something a hell of a lot better.

It was time to get to work.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks everyone for sticking with me for so long! I hope you enjoy the end of this ride we've taken.

One time the Avengers had fought a mad scientist who’d infected himself with some carefully spliced strands of Chitauri DNA in a short-term virus; he’d been trying to replicate part of the Chitauri’s connection to their mothership, essentially giving himself telepathy. He’d hoped the short-term virus strands he’d used would let him experiment with different versions without permanently altering himself. 

But the man had failed to learn from Bruce’s example of why experimenting on yourself was a Bad Idea, had gone _quite_ insane, and had attempted something that would have leveled most of New Jersey in the morning, with the rest of the East Coast by lunch.

After the Avengers had dealt with him, Tony had looked over the man’s early notes, before things had spiraled out of control. The guy had been able to anticipate exactly what people around him wanted, and had been able to anticipate their actions before they even voiced them. Tony really wished Rhodey and Pepper had a touch of that right now. As well as they knew him, Tony had always been mercurial and given to whimsy. When you were the smartest guy in any given room and rich enough to pay for any damages, you could go off-script without consequences. He’d believed that himself right up until Afghanistan. And afterwards he’d kept up the façade as much as possible, for some semblance of normalcy.

Because how did you try to explain what he wanted to his two best friends without destroying his last ragged scraps of pride, insulting them, looking like a magnanimous ass, or looking like a cold-hearted bastard? He wanted them; he wanted their deep bond, and the reasons for that were both legion and in no particular order. Tony would have preferred if he could have made the decision without the forced omega-hood, but he would deal. Because there was nothing else he could do.

Tony breathed out, trying to marshal his thoughts into any kind of order, because Pepper and Rhodey were, unfortunately, not going to spontaneously develop telepathy and figure out what he was going to say. Pepper was in her business casual pose, relaxed in a chair, but her hands free for instant action. Rhodey was on the sofa, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, staring at Tony keenly.

Here went nothing.

“You guys… are great. Way better than I deserve.”

Rhodey’s eyebrow went up. Pepper looked torn between being pleased and alarmed, because anything that sounded like an apology usually presaged something major that Tony hadn’t bothered to mention before press time.

“And you’ve stuck with me… I never wanted to nail anything down too much. And you embraced this whole Avengers thing like pros.” Nothing was coming out in the right order, but Tony forged on anyways. “I don’t even know why you’ve stuck around sometimes.” Anyone sane would have bailed with Tony’s wishy-washy attitude on bonding, wanting more than he’d been willing to give. But they’d stayed. They’d stayed anyway.

“Because we care, Tony. I think we both have gotten very good at figuring out what you meant after all this time.” 

_Thank you, Pepper._ Tony took one last deep breath before plunging into deeper waters.

“I want to close bond with both of you.”

Rhodey’s elbows slipped off his knees and Pepper’s jaw dropped.

Tony pressed on while he was still feeling brave enough to be sincere.

“I would have picked you guys out of everyone. Even a long time ago, if Obi hadn’t been such a dick, I think I would have. You’re the best people I know.”

Other reasons left unsaid, choked behind a barricade of recent betrayal. If he’d been more closely bonded with a friendly alpha, hell, with _anyone_ , even as a beta, they would have been able to sense his distress when Steve had snapped. They could have found him, stopped everything before it had gone too far. If Tony hadn’t been so gun-shy from Obi, he could have had a deep, supportive bond for _years_.

There were other reasons too, close bonds had made him feel like he was being held back, like he was smothering, and considering the sources of his last two close bonds, it took almost too much courage to ask. Tony didn’t want to have to be saved, and he didn’t want to need to be protected. And he also didn’t want to look like he was posturing or seducing, allowing Pepper and Rhodey in because of their worthiness, using his new omega status to snare him a shield of his very own.

No, he wanted _them_ to have something good too, something they could have had all along. Tony had thought he had trusted his friends, and he _did_ , but hadn’t been able to open himself up that last little crucial bit. He wanted to know when his jokes had gone too far, when they were in need of the support he could give them, he wanted to... He wanted to be with them.

“I love you guys. I want you. If… you want me too.” That admission, that question, scared him to death. Because, hello, that was a huge thing to ask, a big piece of their lives to change, forever. None of them would be able to walk away clean if Tony screwed something up.

“I want to, Tony,” Pepper said, moving to embrace him as Tony sagged in relief. His rock, always, the stable place in his ridiculous whirlwind of a life. 

Rhodey moved closer to both of them, reaching out a hand first, being super-polite and keeping his pheromones out of the way until Tony was sure. Still, whatever. They were way, way beyond the courting stage.

Tony turned towards his outstretched palm and rolled his eyes at Rhodey’s caution. “Come on Rhodey, we were necking in college and I’ve seen your O-face plenty of times.”

That broke Rhodey’s jittery formality with a laugh. They’d done mutual handjobs plenty of times, the occasional neck nibble, just not anything like he had with Obi, or Steve. This time, though, none of Tony’s warning signs were twigging, and he felt comfortable and safe with them, even with Rhodey starting to throw off semi-possessive alpha vibes.

“Yeah, I want you, Tony,” he said softly. Then he leaned in, not to kiss Tony, but Pepper. Tony could nearly feel the bond between his two best friends, and could finally (duh, how could he be so blind) sense the close bond they must have been sharing for _years._ Hell, probably decades.

“If I could get in the middle of that, I’d die a happy man,” Tony said, grinning.

“You don’t have to die for that,” Pepper said.

Tony held off for a second before touching them anymore, needing to give them a warning they probably already knew. “You know I’m on a heat hair-trigger, right? We start going hot and heavy, and I’m probably going to get really needy, fast.”

“I know.” Rhodey’s voice had gone a little lower, with a hint of the good kind of growl.

“So, before I get stupid in the head, you both have my permission to bite me.”

Rhodey sort of glared at him before reaching out to run his hand through Tony's hair, gently pulling him close enough to kiss softly. Fuck, he felt good, warm and solid, the sort of comforting he remembered before things had gotten so haywire. 

“You mean that,” Rhodey said, pulling back and looking Tony straight in the eyes.

Tony could feel a thrum of arousal vibrating through his body, less urgent and desperate than he was used to in the past few months, and didn't have any qualms about nodding back, slow and sure. “Hell yes,” Tony said. He turned at Pepper's touch on his cheek, cool and soothing, and saw her nodding. She didn't ask if he was sure again, just kissed him with a sudden surge of confidence that he found incredibly sexy.

“Come here,” she said, tugging on his hand. He stood, both of them touching him, and while the pulse of arousal was _there_ , it wasn't at the overwhelming stage yet. His instincts were calmed by the presence of his pack, his mind was content at the presence of his friends and fucking relieved he'd managed to convey his dreaded _feelings_ in some way that was capable of being interpreted to outsiders. No, not outsiders, friends. Lovers. Packmates.

He had packmates. 

The subtle little thread of cold _wrongness_ that had been trying to intrude on the moment, the little thread named Steve Rogers, he shoved down deep and buried under the feeling of their hands.

“My room,” he said, the words coming out one at a time, each one punctuated by a kiss, one backed by a hint of stubble, the other with the silky feel of lipstick and gloss. Tony made his feet move, slinging an arm over both of them because damn if he was going to let go. Not now. Rhodey kept shooting him looks, not quite incredulous, but more wondering. And a bit possessive. Just a bit. A hot bit. Pepper had more of a knowing look on her face, not quite determined, but one honed by knowing Tony's life inside and out for so long. 

They knew. They knew him better than he knew himself. And they would never, never...

Tony shoved the door open with his foot, his bedroom blessed clear of any scents of his frequent heats (thanks to liberal application of pheromone dampers), his bed big enough for a small orgy. That didn't impress either of them anymore enough for them to stop touching him and each other, and Tony felt something welling up in him that he'd nearly forgotten. He wanted them, wanted to see Pepper throw her head back as she came, wanted to hear the hollow little moan Rhodey made when he lost control, wanted to focus on _them._

The realization that he could focus on someone _else's_ body, give his best friends pleasure, struck a potent flare of lust in Tony's chest. He could give them more, not have to focus on his own extensive grab-bag of issues, he could give back a thousandth of what they'd given to him. 

They could have that.

That made Tony almost frantic, and he turned to Pepper, giving Rhodey a slow, dirty grin over his shoulder.

“I think Pepper gets first dibs,” he said, and Rhodey gave him a very wide smile. By the time Tony had turned back around, Pepper had already flung her suit coat aside and was undoing the buttons of her blouse. Tony moved to help as Rhodey moved to her side, kissing her and tugging her hair from its precise up-do. With years of experience, Tony kissed down Pepper's body as he expertly removed her bra, skirt, and hose, delicately running his hands over her soft skin. 

Rhodey had maneuvered them so Pepper was lying down on the edge of the bed, and Tony went to his knees without hesitation, spreading Pepper's thighs gently and leaning in to smell her. He'd touched her before, saw her eyes when he'd brought her off with his hands, knew what her precisely manicured nails felt like when she ran them lightly over his dick, they'd done that before several times because she had been one of the few in his pack. But they wanted more now, a closer bond, and Tony breathed in her musk appreciatively before leaning in to taste her. Her hand went to his head, pressing in hard before she backed off abruptly. 

Tony nuzzled her and looked up, watching her watching him with a look of sudden distress on her face.

“I know the difference,” he said, letting his shoulders go slack and easy. She felt nothing like Steve, smelled nothing like him, and he didn't have a bubble of panic rising in his chest. Steve hadn't needed to press and hold Tony anywhere to make him submit, not with what he had done. Before everything had happened, Tony had liked his partners to have a take-charge attitude. He still did. He _still did._

Rhodey's warm hand ran down his back, and he leaned in to kiss Tony, tasting Pepper on him before pulling back. Tony turned back to Pepper, running his hands down her thighs and up again. “I'm okay,” he promised, and for once wasn't exaggerating for dramatic purposes. This was _Pepper_ , this was _Rhodey._ He bent down again and drank her in scent, then lightly ran his tongue up her folds, drawing a short gasp out of her. She tasted _amazing_ , rich and almost spicy, and Tony leaned into her to get more, to give more, to feel her open up and get even wetter under his tongue. He could feel Rhodey's hands on him, stroking down his back, on his arms, over the tops of his thighs, the backs of his kneeling calves, just long, soothing, warm motions of comfort and connection that were nevertheless arousing. 

Tony felt himself get hard, and wet, but Rhodey wasn't grabbing for his junk, just touching him. It was downright... _romantic_ , and Tony felt a little hidden tension ease as he let himself widen his stance to make himself more comfortable. Pepper's hand had found its way back to his head, scratching lightly in rhythm with the strokes of his tongue, pulling slightly when he switched gears to gently suck on her clit, pushing his fingers inside her. She arched into his touch, and Tony pushed a little deeper, his own hips jerking slightly in response as Rhodey's hands reached the bottom of his back. He pushed back into Rhodey's hands, not really willing to stop pleasuring Pepper to talk, and Rhodey took the hint and gave his ass a firm squeeze. He didn't dip into Tony's wetness, but instead shifted around so he could take Tony's cock in hand and stroke loosely.

The sharp, urgent edge of heat wasn't quite there yet, though Tony knew he had to be broadcasting pheromones far, wide, and heavy. The easy familiarity of Rhodey's hand on his dick was damn nice, and Tony closed his hand over Rhodey's as Pepper gave a soft cry of orgasm, squeezing his head with her thighs for a few breathless moments.

He pulled back as Pepper finally let him loose, and found himself smiling slowly as Pepper sat up, face flushed, hair mussed, an answering smile on her face as she looked from Tony to Rhodey and back. “That was wonderful, Tony,” she said, and writhed around so she was sitting up, and leaned forward as Tony knelt up to kiss him, slow and thorough. Rhodey shifted closer, dislodging Tony’s hand, the hard muscles of his chest now pressing into Tony’s back and the heat of his cock right there. Tony breathed out slow, easy, into Pepper’s kiss, and reached behind him to bring Rhodey closer.

Rhodey sighed in contentment and quickly adjusted himself so his hardness was sliding along the slick cleft of Tony’s ass. Tony caught his breath at how good that felt, turning away from Pepper to catch Rhodey’s mouth.

“Feels really good,” he said, and turned back, feeling just a little chilled on the front of him. “Pep, want you too, come here.” Pepper shifted off the bed, putting her arms around Tony’s neck as it took Tony and Rhodey a minute to coordinate, Pepper curving her legs around them. 

“Tony, I want you in me,” Pepper said, sounding as sexy as he’d ever heard her, and Rhodey groaned into Tony’s ear at the sound of her voice. Tony murmured, _yes, yes_ in about four different languages as they both shifted a little, Pepper rocking down, Tony pushing up, and just like that, he slid into her slick heat. She gasped a little, one hand going to his head, the other to his shoulder to give her a little leverage, and Tony tilted his head back into her grip to savor the velvet grip of Pepper’s body on his.

It felt easy, natural, safe, and though Tony could feel his heat creeping up on him (slowly, for a change, instead of a sudden storm of hormones), he didn’t feel the stress of having to deal with it alone. He curved one arm around Pepper, and could feel Rhodey caressing them both, slow and sensual. Before Tony could lose his nerve, he snaked his other arm out to where his pants lay puddled on the ground, and found an alpha shot in one of the pockets. He injected himself quickly, not wanting this moment to be interrupted by anything his whacked-out body chemistry would throw at him. The shot calmed the rising heat even further, and Tony leaned back into Rhodey’s body.

“Come on,” he said, running one hand down Rhodey’s impressively-muscled thigh. “You too.” Pepper clenched around Tony, spearing Rhodey with a glance that must have given him all the reassurance he needed. He pulled back just a little, lined himself up, and easily pushed his thickness into Tony’s slick and ready body. Tony gasped as Rhodey slammed home, suddenly feeling the same as when a machine he’d made worked perfectly for the first time, every component clicking and singing in harmony. Pleasure rippled through him, rising as he got hotter, and he moaned softly, trying to get Pepper and Rhodey closer. Deeper. 

Rhodey wrapped his arms tightly around Tony, protective and supportive, but Tony turned his head a little and shook it. _No._ Rhodey loosened his hold, and Tony hadn’t felt anything more powerful than that in a long time. His lust flared with Rhodey’s easy acquiescence, the power of being listened to making him feel damn near giddy. His heat bloomed and his need mounted as Tony kissed his mates, shifting himself blissfully between them.

“Yeah, now, please!” It wasn’t exactly begging, but they didn’t tease, didn’t make him wait. Rhodey was there, whispering in his ear, asking if this was all right, and Tony had to laugh into Pepper’s neck, one hand palming her breast, the other clamped on the muscle of Rhodey’s thigh, and _all right?_

“Fifty shades of green, Rhodey,” he promised. Rhodey laughed, jostling deeper into Tony, and he bit his lip at the feeling of start of Rhodey’s knot at the entrance to his body. Pepper was glorious around him, lithe limbs and soft skin, and Tony whispered, “Pep, you’re perfect, you’re amazing, you feel so good…” Which wasn’t exactly eloquent, but certainly came right from the unfiltered portion of his brain. Pepper reached across to touch Rhodey, and somewhere over the rush of blood in Tony’s ears he could hear them talking. Plotting. Coordinating. And ceased to care in the next second as Rhodey picked up the pace, matching the demands his heat was putting on him.

Thick, perfect strokes filled him, pushing him into Pepper, and Tony found a little presence of mind to slide his hand down from her breast to her clit, rubbing in the fierce little circles she loved until she threw her head back and cried out, tightening around him. He gasped, leaning into her, his hips moving of their own volition as he felt his own orgasm hit him. Rhodey cursed behind him and sped up his strokes, and Tony could _feel_ how close he was, how thick. He smelled wonderful, the scent curling around them both and blending with Pepper’s lighter beta scent to create a perfume Tony wanted to bathe in. 

“Yeah, Tony?” Rhodey got out, and Tony turned his moan into some form of _yes_ as Rhodey pushed in, pulling Tony’s ass flush with his hips, the hollow ache inside him disappearing as Rhodey’s knot filled the space, pulses of hot come flooding him, blending the tail of his orgasm with Pepper into another as Tony came hard around his alpha. Waves of orgasm shook him between his mates, and Tony just had to hold on, his mates keeping him steady between them. His neck and shoulders felt stiff, swollen, and Tony’s hands twitched restlessly as he could smell himself, his bonding glands were so over-activated. 

“Now,” Tony whispered, starting to feel the faint little thread of wrongness, of chill, of something trying to intrude on this moment because they weren’t a certain blond super-soldier in the mix. That wasn’t what he wanted in this moment, not with them. “Pepper, Jim, now, now, now…”

Pepper kissed him right on his demanding lips, kissing herself over to the swollen juncture of neck and shoulder, her touch feather-light. Rhodey stroked down the swollen skin on the other side, and followed his hand with his mouth, his tongue laving up the light secretion of oils already there. That was as far as either of them had ever gone before, and Rhodey looked up at Tony one last time. He did the only think he could think of to reassure them, taking their hands in his and placing them over the arc reactor before any of them could overthink and try to run from something beautiful. 

The simultaneous bites made Tony gasp as something opened up between them, like he’d been looking through a cracked door for years and now had thrown them wide open. Sharing everything. Hiding nothing.

Terrifying.

Amazing.

He put his hands to their heads. “Love you.” Barely more than a whisper. But they all heard it, loud and clear.

\----

Pepper sat up slowly, languidly, Natasha’s eyes following her appreciatively. Her fingers glistened slightly with Natasha’s juices, and Natasha reached out to capture her hand, popping her fingers in her mouth to suck them clean. Pepper just smiled, and reached down to tug Natasha up to return the favor.

“Thanks,” Pepper said, giving her a chaste kiss on the cheek. She wandered into the bathroom, wetting down washcloths and padded back out to toss one to Natasha. “I’d been meaning to get us a little bonding-time for a while.”

Natasha cleaned herself quickly and started to get dressed again. “Me too. But I wanted to wait until you, Tony, and Rhodey had had plenty of time to yourselves.”

Pepper had herself back into her underwear, bra, and skirt in a trice, and sat back down to slide her arms into her blouse so she could look Natasha in the eyes as she talked. “Thank you for that. We needed that.” She paused and corrected herself. “We’d needed that for a long, long time.”

Natasha didn’t need to be psychic to hear, _hell of a way for this to happen._ Whatever the ultimate results, no matter how good Tony was with his closely-bonded mates, they’d had a hard road to get there. The universe had been kind enough to not throw any world-threatening events at them for the past month, and Natasha had been very happy to give her packmate his honeymoon. To be able to get a little closer with Pepper now, that was an added gift. Natasha hadn’t had a lot in the way of female packmates, close-bonded, casual, or otherwise, since the Red Room. It was nice, for once, to be able to be herself with a pack friend and not have to worry about if she’d put on enough alpha pheromone perfume, or to have to watch her behavior so closely. Outside of battle it didn’t matter as much, but Natasha was in charge of the pack now, and she couldn’t ever forget her position with the Avengers.

Having Jim on the team full-time had been an experience. They’d had to do their usual alpha dance, several hard sparring matches to test each other, close-bonded mate versus team alpha. Most of that when Tony was elsewhere, because alpha-on-alpha sparring was an ugly little power play even amongst friends. Not that it hadn’t been sort of fun eventually, once they’d established their boundaries with each other. But once they’d had that… Natasha could feel her pack strengthening as Tony forged and grew his own bonds, with pack and mates both, as Steve had learned to slowly subsume his own instincts into pack tactics. The messy flare-ups of heat had been starting to stabilize with Tony’s new bonds, and the understandable frustration Tony had been having had been tapering off in the face of having some control over his body again.

Steve still had moments when his weakening bond with Tony would flare, particularly when Iron Man was in danger, but so far he’d managed to keep control enough to not seek him out on the battlefield in contradiction of his own advice. Between Natasha’s strict instructions, and the presence of Rhodey on the team, Steve had been rebuilding his role on the Avengers brick by brick, fight by fight.

“I know what you’re going to ask,” Pepper said, buttoning the last button on her blouse as Natasha pulled on her shirt. “Jim and Steve.”

“One of the things,” Natasha admitted. She wasn’t surprised by Pepper’s insight; they’d been slowly strengthening the bond between them, off and on, since Natasha’s infiltration of Stark Industries. With Pepper and Tony together, things had become much clearer between the two women, and at the moment Natasha’s lips still tasted like Pepper. Right now, they were thinking on the same wavelength.

“They didn’t fight,” Pepper said, shaking her head slowly. “Steve is… He knew, and Jim knew, that would rip Tony up inside. We talked, Jim and me, even before Tony came to us. Jim wanted to challenge Steve; he was furious he didn’t get a chance to serve pack justice on him.”

Natasha let a little smile cross her face, knowing Pepper would realize she wasn’t laughing at her. “Whatever he did, talking to Steve, worked about as well as Fury. I’ve done a mental alpha challenge a time or two in my life. That takes a whole separate set of skills.” That, she had been able to tell through their pack bond, but would never be so gauche as to bring it up to Jim directly. There was a decided note of pride in Natasha’s voice at his accomplishment, and Pepper looked pardonably smug. Natasha reached up to trace the corner of Pepper’s mouth, curving her palm around her jaw as she let her smile fade. “Talk to me. What else about your mates do I need to know?”

“Still the spy?” Pepper asked rhetorically.

“Always.” 

“You’re a good leader, Natasha.”

Natasha was far beyond blushing, but smiled in encouragement as Pepper talked. A good leader listened. And she had to be the best leader possible for her pack.

\------

“Left!” Rhodey shouted in Tony’s ear, and Tony did an instinctual sharp mid-air turn, a RPG intercepting his former air-space a split-second later. He spiraled up for a better vantage point, pacing where he _knew_ War Machine was flying, and scanned the battlefield for whomever was unleashing heavy firepower on Seattle. JARVIS helpfully brought up zoomed-in pictures of the people stalking the streets, launchers on their shoulders, which didn't help the situation a whole lot. He saw someone in a McDonald's uniform, someone in a tuxedo, a soccer mom, two businessmen in suits, a lady in an opera gown, someone wearing pajamas, and six cops, all of them toting cases of ammunition and vacant expressions.

“Unless we've got a boatload of sleeper agents, I'm gonna say someone has busted out some mind-control tech,” Tony said tightly. 

Clint cursed creatively over the comm channel, somewhere over to the east, and Tony knew he was sorting through his arrows, trying to find the least-lethal combination. “Anyone see our mastermind? Because I am two hundred percent done with mind control,” he said, sounding justifiably testy.

“On it,” Natasha said, and below Tony knew she was sweeping in from the south, stealthing through the streets, looking for any vantage point where their bad guy could be watching the mayhem. “I’ve got low south, Rogers take low north. Clint, keep an eye on any likely perches.”

“Captain Rogers reports he is also 'on it',” JARVIS reported, and Tony tried, and failed, to register Steve sweeping in from the north. The Hulk was blessedly not in the field, Bruce wisely waiting for a much tougher enemy to present themselves. And no way in hell would they want the Hulk anywhere near a controller.

“Captain Rogers further suggests War Machine take the east and Iron Man take the west for a full sweep of the area, and asks Hawkeye to disable any controlled he can see,” JARVIS continued.

Natasha called out her agreement as the Avengers split to find their foe. Rhodey's surge of annoyance before heading east was a balm to Tony's soul. Four months since he'd been close-bonded to his two best friends, and Steve's constant presence in Tony's heart and mind had faded enough that it was only situations like this that tended to bring out what remained of their bond. And that... could take years to fade. Rhodey had had some sort of dire conversation with Steve not long after Tony had opened up to his mates, but whatever had been said had been enough to stave off any battlefield confrontations. Despite their brittle, formal communications, Steve still continued to be an effective part of the Avengers. It was sort of all he had left to give.

But it was something. It was workable. It let them do their damn jobs. And right now their job was to save the citizens of Seattle. 

Tony powered west, scanners going full blast, taking in heat signatures, building height, sight lines, anything that could give their mind-melding baddie a good vantage point. On the way, he could see small groups of other “sleepers” shuffling towards the city center, and broke out tazing ammo before the poor bastards could be forced to do something they would regret. Better to wake up with a headache and twitching muscles than to realize you'd fired a rocket into a bus. Group after group went down under the electrical barrages as Tony continued his sweep.

“I've put about thirty more sleepers out of commission, so ten-to-one odds our bad guy's in my sector. Still trying to get a lock on him,” Tony reported tersely

The scanners beeped and spun, coming up empty again and again, until Tony flew over an open courtyard between office towers. Then it felt like someone put a hand over his mind and _yanked._ The pull was sudden and powerful, and Tony had landed before he could even start to fight, on his knees before a man in black and green, some elaborate techno-helmet encasing his head.

Inborn stubbornness and over half a year fighting his instincts made Tony muster his will, throwing everything he had at the terrible, numbing pull on his mind before Techno-Helmet could even open his mouth. Nothing happened, Tony couldn't make himself move so much as a muscle, but from the odd _twist_ he felt in his mind, he knew he was in deep trouble. His arm was coming up without his intervention, his torso twisting so the deadly rockets that suddenly prepared to deploy were pointed at one of the entrances to the square.

Techno-Helmet hadn't bothered to talk yet, but there was smugness coming off of him in waves.

“Sir!” JARVIS' voice was echoing in Tony's ears as a distant thing he couldn't respond to, and threads of alpha distress were crashing against the sudden dull walls around his heart and mind. Natasha and Rhodey had to know something was out of kilter, but he had a sinking feeling as he felt himself disable his own GPS at unseen urging. He felt alone, so alone, cut off from his pack, unable to see any way out. How had Techno-Helmet gotten him so _fast?_ How was he controlling the others? Not voice, not line-of-sight, maybe some kind of enhanced brainwaves? That would explain the headgear, and the way he was controlling his own army even though they weren't within his view. He just had to tune into their minds by sight once, then could maintain control by mental radio. Tony just had the bad luck to be the first Avenger to see him, or more specifically be seen by him.

Below the dull feeling, fear was frosting his insides, and if there was any level of his pack-bonds that hadn't been blocked, he was screaming on all of them, hurling himself against the heavy walls around his mind, looking for any weak point. Tony knew he thought differently than most people, and that could give him an edge if he could just think around the problem. If he could just keep his body from attacking anyone, he could find a way out.

“Thank you for showing my current crop of drones was entirely too vulnerable, Iron Man,” Techno-Helmet said, his voice distorted to deep and vicious growl. “There was some concern that my technology might not work on you, but I'm pleased to say not even your vaunted technical prowess is enough to protect you.”

The low growl had to be a deliberate choice, a psychological tactic to imitate an alpha's territorial rumble. _Using a cheap-ass voice filter, you dickwad,_ Tony though with flippant irritation, with one part of him that wasn't trying to figure a way around whatever brainwave-lock Techno-Helmet was using on him. His eyes still seemed to be under his control, and they lighted on a subtle pattern of circuitry he could see over Techno-Helmet's left ear. The pattern twigged something in his memory, and Tony recalled some experimental device he'd once seen in a pitch meeting for an army contract, something to induce a temporary, psuedo pack bond for battlefield conditions... It seemed Techno-Helmet had powered that up and removed all the safeties for his current urban rampage.

It may also have been true that Tony had been reviewing every bit of technology and research on bonding he could get his gauntlets on for the last few months, so that was sort of at the forefront of his mind.

His eyes traced the pathways, did the math, and figured the power source to be built into the protected back plates of the guy's costume. One good hit with Iron Man and Techno-Helmet would be wailing a much different tune than trying to insult Tony's technology.

All of that was very much helping keep the fear at bay as Tony fought for control of his own body, only managing tiny fractions of an inch from his statue-like form. In his ear he could hear faint sounds over the comm channels, maybe his pack, but they weren't quite reaching his brain properly. His pack bonds were quiet, his mental map of where everyone was had gone dark, and Tony was alone. Very, very alone.

“I think you're going to make a great centerpiece for my lair,” Techno-Helmet continued thoughtfully, and Tony mentally laughed at that. No, more like was mentally rolling-on-the-floor, unable to breathe for laughing, because did this guy even hear himself? Where did he think he could go that someone wouldn't find him eventually? “While your superhero pals are off hunting down the rest of my drones, you and I are going to have a fine time liberating the fruits of my labor...”

Tony would have very much like to have tuned out the rest of the guy's speech about how he felt screwed over by his boss and his company and girlfriend and the world, but his attention was forcibly riveted on Techno-Helmet's voice. It took a little time to wind down, but in the middle of his last bit of monologue, the guy stopped in mid-dramatic gesture. It amused Tony to think that under the ridiculous headgear the guy had his mouth hanging open.

“How are you vulnerable to my second-level control? You aren't even the right kind!” Techno-Helmet said, sounding belatedly surprised. He closed the gap between them, and Tony suddenly had a very, very, _very_ bad feeling about this. There was something like a sound in the back of Tony's mind, a sort of tooth-grinding whine, and he felt his lips mouth the command to open his faceplate. 

Inwardly, he was shouting Rhodey's name, calling out for Natasha, Thor, anyone that could feel his distress, or at the least wonder at his radio silence. Techno-Helmet had to be using some level of omega and possibly even beta brainwaves, temporarily overriding existing pack bonds to usurp control with his stolen tech. He had to warn Clint and anyone else, keep this jerk from getting his mental paws on any more people…

Techno-Helmet leaned over slightly, looking at Tony's face, and made an audible sniffing sound. And started to laugh. Tony's arm jerked a fraction of an inch down as anger gave him a little more ammunition against his mind control, but couldn't get more than that. Anger was covering an icy layer of fear, one of his worst nightmares playing out right here, right now.

“Perfect. You will be the crown jewel of my collection, my prize proof-of-concept to everyone who ever doubted me-!” Techno-Helmet cut himself off with a gasp and Tony's faceplate slammed back down, his body turning to point his missile right at the center of Steve Rogers' chest. They were maybe fifty feet apart, and while Rogers had plenty of room to dodge or throw his shield, Techno-Helmet was right next to Tony. Any strike on Techno-Helmet could hurt his packmate, and Tony didn’t think Rogers was able to let that happen, not when it would happen right in front of him. 

“Back away, Captain, or he’ll blow you up,” Techno-Helmet growled. And this was bad, very, very bad, because Rogers was in Tony’s missile sights. How many times had Tony soothed himself to sleep with violent fantasies of seeing Rogers as a bloody pulp after an unexpected bout of heat or unwanted nightmares had ruined his day? More times than he was comfortable admitting, but damn it, if violence was going to happen against Rogers, Tony wanted it to be his _own_ damn choice. They’d reached an uneasy equilibrium over the past few months, with Rogers carefully keeping his distance in the Tower, dispensing his tactics on the battlefield, apparently taking what little comfort he could in the success of the team as a whole. It had been a brittle and uncertain sort of calm, but it had been working. 

Anger surged at Techno-Helmet’s words as he tried to clamp down on Tony’s movements, and Tony was able to jerk his head away to stare at the technology on his enemy’s head. He _refused_ to kill Rogers on anyone’s say-so but his own, and felt his arm and aim wavering a little as he fought. A feeling of tight, hollow bands clamped against Tony’s thoughts, and he felt his arm stabilize. Even if he were the only weapon Techno-Helmet had to use against Rogers, this would be bad. But there were dozens of other mind-controlled people out there, and if only a few had slipped through the Avengers’ net, then surely more of them were on their way any minute. If Rogers had to pause to take out any more “drones,” Techno-Helmet would make Tony fire.

“Kill him,” Techno-Helmet growled, and Tony felt his arm tense, and a blinding migraine spread across his head as he held himself back from a command that pulled hard on his instincts. Sight and sound narrowed to a tiny point as Tony struggled, and initially he didn’t understand the odd, shrill sound beating against his ears. He had dozens of sorts of alerts and alarms, for suit damage, low ammo, distress signals for each of his teammates, and many, many more. This particular alert was not particularly familiar, and it took a moment for his very preoccupied mind to latch onto its meaning. 

It was the alert from Steve’s mouthguard, the alarm they’d installed in case he’d ever take it off on the battlefield.

Anger, fear, and revulsion swamped Tony in a tidal way of adrenaline, and his awareness spun back out to see Steve’s gauntleted hand fall away from his mouth, his white gag dangling loose from its strap. Tony could see the red marks from the pressure and the faint scars from the frankly medieval surgery needed to wire Steve’s jaw shut, but with the gag gone, it wouldn’t prevent him from speaking.

 _“Tony, stand down!”_ Steve roared, his voice hoarse but resonant. It reached right past Techno-Helmet’s control, past Natasha’s authority, right through Rhodey and Pepper’s bond, and grabbed right onto the core of him. With his alpha’s command, Tony relaxed his arm, disengaged the missile, and stood. Without thought. Without even being able to fight. Snap of his fingers, and Steve had him right at his command. Tony’s gorge rose, but with Steve right in front of him, Techno-Helmet’s commands (being shouted in his ear in a frantically-rising tone of voice) seemed to slide right off of him.

Tony waited for Steve’s next command, feeling just as helpless as he had a few minutes before, but blinked as Steve reached up with a slightly-shaking hand and snapped the mouthguard back on.

“Captain Rogers suggests you fight!” JARVIS called right in his ear, relaying Rogers’ battle commands without the poison of his voice. Tony’s world snapped back into place, his mental map of his pack returned, and he could feel the hot threads of alpha protectiveness from Rhodey and Natasha surging closer with every second. In control again, Tony spun and grabbed Techno-Helmet before he could run more than a few paces, bringing his metal-covered fist down hard enough on the side of his ridiculous headgear to crush his mind-control module. He could feel Steve running close behind him, and swung Techno-Helmet right into his path. Steve obliged by giving the guy a shield to the face which split his helmet entirely, and then a follow-up fist that put the man’s lights out and made him measure his length in concrete. Twice.

Steve stood over the man for a long moment, his shield trembling, and then bent down to kick off the remains of his helmet. He pulled out ties from his utility belt to bind the man’s hands, and then dropped him unceremoniously on his face. From the tension in his back, and the blazing alpha rage Tony would have had to have been dead to ignore, Steve was within a thin margin of doing the man a lot more damage. Tony was not entirely in disagreement, still doing a lot of physical and mental deep breathing exercises.

“Captain Rogers inquires at to your health,” JARVIS relayed. Tony breathed out a long, slow breath.

“I’m all right,” he said into the comms, sounding a lot calmer than he felt. “We’ve got the guy. Zero in on my location.” Tony reactivated his GPS, but didn’t get any closer to Steve. “Rogers, he’s got power packs on his backplates.”

Steve bent down, still not turning around to face Tony, and ripped the rest of the components away with a few brisk, efficient motions. He tossed the tech away as Natasha’s voice came over the comms.

“The rest of the people just woke up. I’ve got everyone rounding them up just in case anyone decided to join the general mayhem for a lark. War Machine’s on his way to you.” 

Tony knew Natasha knew things were not “all right,” but also knew their problems would keep for a little while. Everyone knew where they were. And his alphas knew Tony could handle himself. If he said he was all right, then for a little while, they’d believe him.

Steve finally turned, his eyes hot and far too blue above his gag. He stared at Tony, not dropping his gaze for a second.

“Captain Rogers extends his most profound apologies. If there had been another available route, he would have taken it to secure your freedom,” JARVIS relayed.

“You put the gag back on,” Tony said, watching for Steve’s reaction. He saw his hand tighten on the grip of his shield, and relax again, and then Steve nodded.

“Captain Rogers says he is trying to re-learn the correct course of action for his unforgivable crime.”

Tony stared at Steve, and slowly shook his head. He felt something within him pull tight and _snap_.

“Go to hell,” he said, without heat or rancor.

Steve nodded and thumped his fist against his chest.

Tony didn’t need JARVIS to relay that meaning. _I’m already there._

“Join the club. At least I have good company,” Tony said, and looked up as Rhodey flew over them, and waited, hovering. Just being there. That was all Tony needed.

Steve bent down to lift Techno-Helmet’s unconscious body to his shoulder, the tremble of uncertainty seemingly gone from his body.

“Captain Rogers says, ‘I was wrong,’” JARVIS relayed quietly.

Tony grabbed the rest of the half-destroyed tech before he answered, just as quietly, “So was I.”

Tony had his pack. And his team. He looked up at Rhodey, a solid anchor of support, could feel Pepper at a far distance, a constant in the orbit of his life, and could feel the Avengers around him, his help in this insane world where aliens and mad scientists were part of the everyday landscape now. He wasn’t alone to face them anymore. He wasn’t eaten up by them. He was more. He had so much more, now.

And had almost lost it again. 

But now he was sure he could find it, anytime, anywhere. 

Tony took off, leaving Steve behind to take care of himself, joining Rhodey.

“You all right, Stark?” came Natasha’s voice over the comms.

Rhodey fell in beside Tony in easy sync as they flew back towards the rest of the pack, a jerk of his head a wordless nod of understanding.

Tony answered all of them, “I will be.”

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Third Chance](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9553727) by [EvilDime](https://archiveofourown.org/users/EvilDime/pseuds/EvilDime)




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